Pricing is the lever operators reach for first and understand least. This guide is a method rather than an opinion: compute what a unit costs you, choose a shape that matches the scarcity at the site, and revise on evidence.
Step 1: compute landed cost per kWh
Not your energy tariff — your landed cost, which includes the fixed charges that do not scale with usage.
landed cost per kWh
= energy tariff (₹/unit)
+ (monthly demand charge ÷ expected monthly units)
+ (fixed site rent ÷ expected monthly units)
+ transmission and duty componentsThe second term is the one that surprises people. At a demand charge of ₹18,750/month and 3,000 units, it adds ₹6.25/kWh — more than half your energy tariff again. At 10,000 units it adds ₹1.88. This is the same arithmetic that makes utilisation the dominant variable in the business.
Step 2: choose the shape
| Site type | Scarce resource | Tariff shape |
|---|---|---|
| DC highway | Throughput per bay | ₹/kWh + idle fee after grace |
| DC urban | Power and bay | ₹/kWh + idle fee, time-of-day |
| AC destination | The bay itself | ₹/minute or ₹/kWh with a session fee |
| AC workplace | Nothing — it is an amenity | Near-cost ₹/kWh, monthly billing |
| Depot | Sanctioned load | ₹/kWh internal, time-shifted |
The general principle: price the thing that is scarce. On DC, energy and throughput are scarce, so charge for energy and penalise idling. On slow AC, the socket is scarce and the energy is trivial, so charging by the minute is defensible in a way it never is on DC.
Step 3: build the time-of-day structure
If your DisCom tariff varies by time of day and yours does not, you are absorbing the variance. Mirror the structure, and give the discount where your marginal cost is genuinely lower.
- Keep it to three windows at most. Drivers will not model a six-band tariff.
- Make the off-peak discount large enough to change behaviour — 15% moves nobody, 30% moves fleets.
- Align window boundaries to your DisCom’s, not to round clock hours, if they differ.
- Resolve the window at session start and lock it in. A session that spans a boundary should not reprice mid-charge.
Step 4: set the idle fee properly
An idle fee is a throughput instrument, not a revenue line. Its success measure is that almost nobody pays it.
- 01Grace period long enough to be fair — 10 to 15 minutes covers a walk back from a restaurant.
- 02Rate high enough to matter — a token amount is ignored.
- 03Disclosed before the session, on the same screen as the price.
- 04Consider waiving it overnight, where nobody is waiting and the penalty serves no purpose.
Step 5: segment by audience
The same connector can serve a walk-up driver, a repeat local, a fleet with committed volume, a resident and your own staff. One price for all five loses money on some and business on others. Attach the rate to the driver group rather than to a code, so eligible drivers simply see their price with nothing to remember.
Step 6: revise on evidence
After a month you will have the three numbers that should drive the first revision: utilisation by hour, realisation per kWh after discounts, and the failed-session rate. Low utilisation in a specific window is a pricing opportunity; low realisation against a healthy headline rate means your promotions are running too broadly.