grommet said:
Yes, you can bill per kWh in California legally... but I've never seen any L2 owners have much interest in doing do. If they choose to charge a fee, most bill for the time occupied (some with a minimum fee), and some charge per "session."
I'll remind folks that Coulomb/ChargePoint typically charges L2 site owners (like 350Green, CarCharging Inc, your local city government, etc.) 50 cents per charge session, ~7% of any fees they charge, and a monthly "network fee" for each unit. If they only billed the customer for the actual cost of kWh used, they still wouldn't break even.
I don't expect low kW public L2 to ever become a significant factor in public charging. PHEVs will probably never be willing to pay the high
real costs for L2, and BEV drivers will prefer the more convenient and cheaper per kWh fast charge stations, once they are built.
The basic, and IMO, likely fatal flaw in L2 public charging, is the problem of allocating charges for the two services, parking and charging, for which different customers have very different price-points.
But it is a promising trend, that the newest ChargePoint update will give operators (for the first time, AFAIK) the option to break down charges for the two disparate services, at charge sites:
...This easy to use, user friendly solution is allowing users throughout the nation have all the latest information on charging stations...
• New pricing structures expand upon ChargePoint’s industry-leading Flex Billing with several new features, including the ability to combine per-hour and per-kWh fees, and the ability to charge by plug-in time or actual charging time. Station owners can specify preferred pricing groups, each with different pricing rules...
http://insideevs.com/chargepoint-announces-new-platform-and-intelligent-networ/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I think the major benefit of separate time and kWh charges will be for fast charging, to discourage slow "topping off", or worse, leaving an unattended BEV in a charging space, after the session is over.
And as I've said before, due to it's strategic location, and PG&E's no-demand-fee-rate options, Vacaville is one of the best locations in the USA for a
profitable (~50 kW DC) public charge station.