What is utilisation of a charger?

The energy a charger delivers compared with what it could deliver at full power all year. Because most costs are fixed, it decides whether a site pays back.

Explained in

Charging infrastructure · Stop 08How does a site recover its cost?Investment, energy cost and revenue: why utilisation is the lever of every charging hub, computed for one 1.2 MW site.
  • Once: chargers, transformer station, cables and civil works, the grid connection, planning.
  • Every year: rent to the site host, grid fees, maintenance, software, support, insurance.
  • Per kWh: the energy itself.
From “Fixed costs, variable revenue”, stop 08

Terms

  1. Site hostThe owner of the location, who provides the parking spaces for the chargers.
  2. Grid feeWhat 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.
  1. How many public charge points are there in Europe?More than 1.1 million in the EU alone: the European Alternative Fuels Observatory counted 1,159,838 public recharging points in August 2026. The map on this site covers part of the network: 839,000 public charge points at 227,000 sites across Europe, from national registries and OpenChargeMap.
  2. How far apart are fast chargers on EU motorways?Along the TEN-T core network, AFIR requires a charging pool at least every 60 km in each direction: 400 kW by the end of 2025, 600 kW by the end of 2027.
  3. Why does a charging hub need its own transformer?Large hubs connect at medium voltage, in Germany 10 to 30 kV, above the 400-volt street grid. The transformer that steps the voltage down for the chargers then becomes part of the site.
  4. What does it take to build a charging hub?A site host, a grid connection, an energy supply contract, a building permit and backend and roaming partners. Most steps depend on each other, so the developer in this path starts the grid connection first.