Actually, it was already perfect for most people. Before May 2019, for example, you could attach your electric car to the Wien Energie charging stations – and then pay based on the kilowatt hours (kWh) charged. But then they switched from a consumption-based to a time-based tariff system, and since then you have been paying by the minute. So after all the minutes at the charging station, no matter how fast or slow you charge, or whether you charge at all. If the cable hangs, the minutes run according to the tariff.
The reason for the step backwards in charging stations from kWh to minute billing was calibration law in the EU. This wants you to be able to read the consumption directly at the charging station, just like when filling up with petrol or diesel at the gas station. In Austria, however, the certified devices are still missing in some places, and the operators have been waiting for four years now for something to finally move. The industry is waiting for the Federal Office for Calibration and Surveying (affiliated to the Federal Ministry of Labor and Economics) to issue a new regulation so that there is legal clarity.
“Usage-based billing is an absolute customer wish. We know that from all surveys. However, there are currently hurdles to the legally secure implementation of this form of billing, as despite years of demands from the industry, the calibration law has not yet been adjusted,” says Wien Energie. “Billing by kilowatt hours at our charging stations would already be technically possible, but due to the uncertain legal framework, the introduction of such tariffs must be carefully considered. It is also our wish to be able to offer our customers such tariffs and we are working on it in the background. In any case, what is needed is a practicable legal framework that allows kWh to be billed at existing charging stations.”
Unfair offsetting with disadvantages for customers
The minute billing that currently prevails (even if there are now kWh billing from individual providers) has its pitfalls. Because at lower temperatures, e-cars generally have longer charging times, as the ÖAMTC points out – and this then results in higher costs with minute rates, even though you are not charging more kWh. Or the other case: The charging station provides high charging rates (= more expensive minute rate), but the e-car cannot keep up and charges more slowly. Even then you pay more for the same amount of charged KWh. Unfair, many e-drivers think.
After all, some energy suppliers – specifically Linz AG and Illwerke in Vorarlberg – already offer kWh billing as an alternative. Lo and behold, things could even get moving. Because EVN, i.e. the largest electricity supplier in Lower Austria, announced in a letter to its customers that they might switch to kWh billing in autumn.
The Federal Association for Electromobility Austria (BEÖ) has been calling for customer-friendly billing according to kilowatt hours (kWh) for years and has already issued a statement in 2022. The demand at the time included: a “quick amendment to the Measures and Calibration Act with sufficient transitional provisions to protect the existing and funded charging points” was needed. Of course, infrastructure that has already been developed should continue to function or be permitted even if the switch to kWh is made.
E-charging stations: Finally switch from time tariff to kWh billing!
A question of the display & 33 man-years
Since 2019, adjustments to the measurement and calibration law have also been required at Oesterreichs Energie, i.e. the representation of the interests of the Austrian electricity industry. At that time, for example, there was the idea that one could explore the “display of signed measurement data on a remote viewing window such as end devices (smartphone, tablet, display in the vehicle, etc.)” – so that the charging station does not need a display at all to charged kWh, but for example a smartphone app.
But in October 2022, a proposal for a new regulation for calibration regulations for electrical tariff devices was heavily criticized by the same interest group. It is “not a practical legal basis” to quickly enable energy-based billing at the existing charging stations. On the one hand, the objection is that the terms are being mixed up (a “charging device” is not a “charging tariff device”), and on the other hand, it is stated how complicated “exceptional approval procedures” are. In order to get this and to be able to bill by kWh, existing charging stations would have to be subjected to “calibration in the field” again. But because there are “neither the necessary certified bodies nor the necessary testing and measuring equipment”, it is enormously complex. It would require a “resource deployment of around 33 man-years”.
The old charging stations, often not equipped at all or only with rudimentary displays, are the core of the problem. Only: Someone has already paid for them, and they don’t want to be dismantled, especially not in times of rapidly growing use. Operators of charging points would then have to invest “large sums again in retrofitting or converting existing hardware”. So how could you speed things up in such a way that the old hardware can still load?
Oesterreichs Energie, with its President Michael Strugl, who is also Verbund CEO, criticized the ordinance and therefore called for “temporary approval for kWh billing on presentation of a conversion concept”. In Germany, ministries, state calibration authorities, charging station operators and manufacturers could have agreed on this as early as 2019. Or in plain English: charging station operators should be able to switch to kWh and then have to convert over time and not overnight. And if there are negative test results from random samples, then the operator could lose the approval until he has upgraded to newer devices or suitable measurements.
And so an ordinance that is intended to clearly clarify the legal framework for e-charging stations is still in the works at the Federal Office for Calibration and Surveying and is awaiting implementation. An old startup truism applies here too: hardware is hard.