Expensive despite charging electric car at low prices

More than half a million of the country’s homeowners, a group that is also growing during the winter, have capacity fees in their electricity contracts. This means that those who use a lot of electricity and, for example, charge their electric car at the wrong time, can get a much higher price – despite charging when the electricity price was low.

Electric car owners with capacity fees in their contracts are urged to be careful with how they handle the charging. This mainly applies to residential customers of Ellevio, but during the winter, more grid companies are following suit. By 2027, all of them are expected to have implemented them.

Customers now have to keep track of the electricity price, subscription fees, transmission fees, and now also capacity tariffs. According to Ellevio, the grid is ‘like a motorway, you don’t want it to be crowded with cars during the day’.

For example, someone with a charging station charging at 11 kW while electric heating and other appliances are running can easily end up with a penalty fee of over 1,200 SEK. Over the past year, electricity has been cheapest during the day while capacity fees are at their highest.

Incomprehensible, according to one of Ellevio’s customers.

‘It is illogical not to use electricity when there is a large surplus production in the middle of the day. It’s about power balancing, electricity cannot be saved but must be consumed instantly, otherwise it will be exported,’ says Roland Müller-Suur to DN.

Must adapt

At Ellevio, it is stated that the capacity fee is halved at night to give electric car owners ‘a charging window’ without high capacity fees.

‘Electric car charging is a major power consumer. When we looked at how it will work for electric car customers, we assessed that the time at night is enough to charge 40-50 kWh, you can charge about 30 miles every night, which is much more than most people use for normal commuting,’ says Henrik Hagberg, responsible for pricing at Ellevio.

According to Hagberg, there needs to be a fee that counteracts creating large peaks in the grid.

‘We need to adapt, and if the incentive becomes too low, it will have no effect,’ says Henrik Hagberg.