Where Do Savings in Electric Car Charging Come From?
The cost of charging an electric car is not determined solely by the price per kilowatt-hour. Total expenses can also depend on the time of charging, charging power, type of electricity contract, possible capacity charges, and the pricing of any charging operator you use.
The biggest savings often came from shifting charging away from the most expensive hours. Because the car typically sat at home for long periods, charging did not need to start immediately after parking. Delayed charging was worth using in both detached houses and housing companies. Most home chargers offered a timer, and if not, charging could usually be scheduled via the car itself.
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Affordable Home Charging in a Detached House
In a detached house, optimising electric car charging costs was usually straightforward, because the electricity connection and contract were in the owner’s name. This made it possible to manage all charging-related matters without intermediaries.
Spot Pricing, Also Known as Exchange Electricity
If you mainly charged your car at home and could schedule charging for the cheapest hours, a spot-priced electricity contract was often the best option. Charging consumed a lot of energy, but the timing of that consumption was flexible: the car rarely needed a full charge immediately when arriving home.
In practice, an effective solution was to combine a spot contract with scheduled charging, either in the car’s own app, the charger, or a separate control service. This way, charging targeted the hours when electricity was cheapest. Lataa fiksusti helped schedule charging for cheaper hours.
A fixed-price electricity contract was a good choice if the rest of the household’s electricity use was stable and predictable, you did not want to follow hourly prices, or you could not schedule charging. The benefit of a fixed price was convenience: you did not need to monitor the electricity price.
On average, a fixed-price contract ended up more expensive than spot electricity. If the electric car had to be charged immediately upon arriving home and charging could not be delayed, the benefit of spot electricity remained small. But when charging could be shifted to cheaper hours, spot electricity was a cost-effective option for charging an electric car.
Extra Savings With Solar Power
If the property had solar panels, an electric car was an excellent way to use self-produced electricity. This was especially true on sunny summer days, when there was plenty of electricity on the market, and its spot price could drop very low. In those situations, selling surplus production to the grid was not worthwhile; instead, it made more sense to use that electricity directly to charge the car. Solar power was not subject to grid fees, so charging was practically cost-free.
A smart solution was to combine solar power with intelligent charging control. Then the car charged when self-produced power was available or when grid-purchased electricity was otherwise cheap.
Capacity Charge – A Subtle Enemy of Savings
Cheap energy alone was not enough if you repeatedly charged the car at high power at the same time as other major household consumption. With some network companies, such as Helen, total costs were also affected by a capacity charge based on peak demand. Its impact on monthly costs could be significant, wiping out spot pricing savings in an instant.
Simplified, the capacity charge was a fee for how much power you used at the same time. It was not just about monthly consumption, but how high your momentary load peaked. If the car charged at full power at the same time as, for example, the sauna, oven, and water heater, a high consumption spike could easily occur.
You could avoid capacity charges, for example, by:
- Keeping charging power low enough that it did not unreasonably increase the property’s peak loads.
- Avoiding charging at the same time as the sauna, water heater, and other large appliances.
- Taking advantage of any capacity-charge-free hours if your network company offered them.
In many homes, there was no need to charge the car at maximum power every night. Slower charging could be more economical overall if it prevented high power peaks.
Charging an Electric Car in a Housing Company
In a housing company, charging was rarely something a single resident could decide alone. The best outcome usually came when charging was solved as a whole, and the system was not allowed to grow haphazardly based on individual chargers. Careful planning mattered.
A Practical Charging Solution for Housing Companies
A good starting point was for the housing company first to determine the capacity of its electricity connection, expected future demand, and any need for load management. Based on this, it could decide whether to build charging infrastructure gradually or fully for several spots at once. The key idea was that in a housing company, charging was primarily a property-level infrastructure issue, not just a convenience feature for individual drivers. If the system was built only for the first users’ needs, it might later turn out to be a poor solution and expensive to fix.
A commonly effective model looked like this:
- The housing company owned the entire charging infrastructure and defined the rules and costs for its use.
- Charging points included consumption metering and load management.
- Residents were billed either based on actual consumption, a fixed monthly fee, or a combination of both.
- Charging was scheduled for cheaper hours where possible, or costs were otherwise allocated fairly.
If the company allowed completely separate individual solutions without central management, the result could be unfair cost-sharing, complicated billing, and, in the worst case, capacity problems in the electrical system.
For most housing companies, the best option was a centralised system where charging infrastructure, metering, and load management were implemented as one package. This also made it easier to add new charging points later. Implementing such a system often requires cabling upgrades to meet higher capacity needs.
Fair Distribution of Costs
The cost-sharing model in a housing company should be clearly and transparently agreed in advance. Typical options included:
- The resident paid only for actual energy use based on kWh.
- The resident paid a monthly fee in addition to consumption to cover system maintenance and services.
- The investment was covered via maintenance charges, and usage was billed separately.
Usage-based billing was often the fairest option when there were many users and consumption varied. A monthly fee could still be justified if it covered, for example, system maintenance, fault monitoring, payment processing, and servicing. Allocating the capacity charge to individual users was difficult, because it was based on the property’s total simultaneous peak consumption. In practice, other fixed costs could be rolled into the kilowatt-hour price so that cost allocation stayed clear and predictable.
It also made sense to review pricing a few times a year so that it matched actual costs, the general electricity price level, and system maintenance expenses.
Charging Operator – Extra Cost for Convenience
In many housing companies, using a charging operator was a sensible choice. The operator handled user management, authentication, consumption metering, reporting, and even billing. This meant the board or property manager did not need to spend time sorting out individual charging sessions.
The operator model was usually not the cheapest possible, but it could clearly be the lightest administratively. A small housing company could also manage with a simpler solution, as long as metering, load management, and cost allocation were properly planned. There were several charging operators on the market, but the essential issue was not which operator, but that responsibilities, metering, and billing were clearly defined.
When choosing a charging operator, it was worth checking that the company was financially sound and the service was long-lived. The system should allow flexible pricing and fair allocation of costs to users. A good solution offered predictable pricing, reasonable fixed fees, and the possibility to switch providers later without major restrictions. Any data connections should preferably be in the housing company’s name.
Allocating the Capacity Charge
In a housing company, managing capacity charges and consumption peaks was especially important, because several cars might be charged at the same time. If every car started charging at full power after the workday, costs could rise surprisingly high.
That was why housing companies benefited from solutions that allowed charging to be:
- Shared dynamically between several cars.
- Automatically limited to lower power during peak periods.
- Shifted to night-time or other cheaper hours.
A simple way to steer charging away from capacity-chargeable hours was to set daytime charging prices unreasonably high.
Charging an Electric Car on the Road
At home, the lowest cost usually came from timing your charging. On the road, the main difference came from what kind of charging you used and at what electricity price.
Slow Charging – Often the Best Option
If the car stayed parked for a longer period, for example, at a hotel, at work, or during a long break, basic or slower charging was often the smartest option. The reason was simple: there was no point paying for speed if there was no real need for it.
Slow charging was often a good choice because:
- The price per kilowatt-hour was usually lower than at high-power fast chargers.
- There was no need to push the car’s battery with very high charging power.
- Charging could be combined with parking or other errands without a separate waiting time.
- Total travel costs stayed lower, even if an individual charging session took longer.
Fast and high-power charging were useful when you wanted to continue your trip quickly. In practice, they were paid convenience services: charging was fast, but that was often reflected in the price, and the battery also wore out faster.
A simple decision model looked like this:
- If the car was going to be parked for a longer period, slow or basic charging was usually the smartest option.
- If the stop was roughly the length of a meal break, standard DC fast charging could be a good compromise.
- If the goal was to get back on the road as quickly as possible, high-power charging was justified even though it was more expensive.
Comparing Apps and Prices
Anyone charging on the road benefited from installing the most common charging apps on their phone before setting off. In practice, the price of charging could vary significantly depending on the station, operator, contract, and app used. Even at the same station, different service providers could have very different prices. Nowadays, these prices could also vary by time of day.
A good practice was to have at least a few common charging apps on your phone. In Finland, for example, you might encounter services like Recharge, Virta, or ABC-lataus. This way, you did not have to register in a hurry on the road, search for a payment card, or accept the first price you saw.
It was worth comparing prices before starting a charging session, and preferably already before the trip, because the differences could be large. Some services also offered monthly subscriptions or loyalty levels that suited frequent drivers but not occasional users.
On the road, the solution was therefore preparation: accounts set up in advance, payment methods ready, and checking the price before starting to charge.
If you often pay with your phone, have a look at our guide to mobile wallets as well.
A Practical Plan for Low-Cost EV Charging
Affordable charging did not require constant price monitoring once the basics were in place. For many, the following approach worked well:
- Use a dedicated home charger and schedule at home.
- In a detached house, choose a spot-priced contract if you can shift consumption to cheap hours.
- In a housing company, make use of metering and load management.
- Keep charging power only as high as you actually need.
- Whenever possible, direct solar power to your own car, especially during sunny and cheap hours.
- On the road, use fast charging only when saving time really matters.
- Install several charging apps on your phone to compare prices.
The Cost of Charging
The price of charging an electric car varied widely depending on where and how you charged. The biggest differences came from whether you used home charging, a housing company’s system, or public chargers on the road.
In a Detached House
Charging in a detached house was usually the cheapest option. In an optimal situation, the cost could be as low as about 9 cents/kWh if you had a spot-priced contract and systematically timed charging to the cheapest hours.
In practice, this required scheduling charging with the car’s app or the charger, shifting consumption away from expensive hours, avoiding power peaks, and using solar power where possible.
Without optimisation, the price was often clearly higher, but still usually lower than at commercial chargers.
In a Housing Company
In a housing company, a good and realistic overall charging price was often around 14 cents/kWh. This was achievable when charging was metered, costs were allocated correctly, and load management was in use. It usually also requires sufficient volume to spread fixed costs across many users.
Charging prices in housing companies were generally higher than in detached houses, because they often included investment costs, maintenance, system services, and possibly the impact of capacity charges. These were not as easy to optimise for an individual user.
On the Road
At public charging points, a typical price was around 25 cents/kWh, but there was a lot of variation. Sometimes you could charge less, for example, at supermarkets, hotels, or other destinations.
Fast and high-power charging were usually the most expensive options. The price could be around 35 cents/kWh or higher, and in some cases even up to 80 cents/kWh.
On the road, you mainly pay for speed and convenience. The cheapest options usually appeared when you could combine charging with parking or other errands and did not need the fastest possible charging.
Typically, an electric car uses about 12–20 kWh/100 km, depending on driving conditions.
Bottom Line
You could cut electric car charging costs significantly with just a few basic choices. The most important steps were scheduling charging outside the most expensive hours, keeping power peaks under control, and avoiding unnecessarily expensive fast charging when slower charging was sufficient. With poor optimisation, running an EV could become as expensive as driving a petrol car.
In a detached house, the situation was usually straightforward, because your electricity contract largely determined your costs. In a housing company, savings came from implementing charging as a shared, metered system with load management. On the road, the lowest costs went to those who compared prices instead of automatically choosing the fastest option.