How does a site recover its cost?
One year after the first walk across the car park. The hub has delivered its first full quarter.
The developer compares the numbers with the plan: how often were the chargers used?
The questionWhat decides whether a hub pays back what it cost?
Computed: 1,200 kW × 8,760 hours × utilisation. At 10%, the hub sells about 1,051 MWh a year, roughly 96 sessions a day at 30 kWh each.
Fixed costs, variable revenue
- Once: chargers, transformer station, cables and civil works, the grid connection, planning.
- Every year: rent to the , , maintenance, software, support, insurance.
- Per kWh: the energy itself.
Most costs are fixed, whether one car comes or a hundred. Revenue comes with every kWh sold. That makes , the share of its capacity a hub actually uses, the lever of the whole business.
Beyond the kWh
A hub can earn in other ways too: after charging, a share of the shops' revenue, advertising on the chargers, or flexibility services to the grid. For the site host, the value can lie in customers who stay while they charge.
How the companies around charging earn money is the subject of Business models.
Check your understanding
3 questions. Answer all of them to complete this stop. Each answer explains itself.
Why is utilisation the lever of a charging hub?
Chargers, connection, rent and maintenance cost the same whether the hub is busy or not.
How much energy does a 1.2 MW hub deliver in a year at 10% utilisation?
1,200 kW × 8,760 h × 10% = about 1,051 MWh, roughly 1 GWh.
Which of these is a fixed cost of a hub?
Rent is due whether cars come or not. Energy and transaction fees grow with every session.
- Site host The owner of the location, who provides the parking spaces for the chargers. EV charging fundamentals, stop 02 Glossary
- Utilisation How intensively a charger is used, for example in sessions or energy per day. EV charging fundamentals, stop 07 Glossary
- Occupancy fee A price per minute that AFIR allows at charge points of 50 kW and more to discourage long occupancy. Stop 07 Glossary
- Grid fee What a grid operator charges for the use of its grid, as part of the electricity price; in Germany, sites with power metering also pay per kilowatt of the year's peak. Business models, stop 01 Glossary
- EUR-Lex: Regulation (EU) 2023/1804 (AFIR), Articles 3, 5 and 20 and recital 38. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1804/oj. Checked 09 Oct 2026. © European Union, reused under Commission Decision 2011/833/EU.