Regulation Breakdown: Per-Kilowatt-Hour Billing is Coming to Canada
In February 2023, Measurement Canada has introduced new regulations to govern how EV drivers are billed for charging at public outlets, and it promises to make topping up your vehicle’s battery a more equitable process.
Prior to the new regulations drivers could only be billed for the amount of time they spent plugged in at a charger.
The downside of this was that people who drove EVs that could only take on a charge slowly were billed more than drivers whose EVs could accept faster charging speeds. They may have been plugged in for the same amount of time, but the driver in the slower-charging car would end up paying the same money for less electricity.
This is set to change with the regulations which were announced in late 2022 and will be implemented over the following 18 months. Overseen by Measurement Canada under the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act, charging stations will be allowed to provide customers with accurate measurement and billing based on the amount of charge their vehicles take on.
Measurement Canada will work with new and existing EV charging stations that meet its technical standards to begin billing based on kilowatt-hours (kWh) consumed while monitoring the latest advancements in charging here in Canada and internationally.
SWTCH’s Customer Experience Manager, Jason Cruickshank, believes that the new regulations are a change that EV drivers have been wanting for a while, though in certain situations the old time-based model may remain preferable.
“I think this is something that customers have really been looking for because there are a lot of EVs that can accept a charge at different rates and different levels of chargers that deliver that charge at different rates. There are situations where the time-based model may still be attractive, like in places that don’t want to spend money on installing measurement equipment but on the whole the per-kilowatt movement has been long awaited and it’s going to be a big improvement that will provide more equitable EV charging for all drivers.”
Jason Cruickshank
Customer Experience Manager, SWTCH
