I often hear EV drivers complain about the cost of public charging and then compare the cost of public charging to the cost of home charging. "Why can I charge at 7p/kWh at home when it costs 50p-90p/kWh for public charging?". Part of the reason for this is a misunderstanding of the costs incurred by Charge Point Operator (CPO) compared to home charging users. They are providing a charging service to those away from home. I
To me it's not possible to compare the cost of home and public charging. It would be like comparing the cost of a meal bought in a restaurant to the cost of cooking your own meal at home. The same goes for buying a coffee in a coffee shop compared to making one at home.
When we cook at home we don't think of the costs associated with buying/renting the house, refitting the kitchen, replacing appliances, energy costs or our time cooking the food or making the drink. We often just think of the cost of the ingredients.
The difference between home and public charging costs are very similar. Home charging is so much cheaper because there are so many embedded costs, that we have already paid through having a home, which we don't take into account in the 'p/kWh cost we discuss.
Cost of home charger
The first point would be the type of charger we use at home and public charging are generally not comparable unless you're using a 7kW destination charger as they are similar to the charger we install at home. We can't compare the installation cost of a 7kW home charger to the cost of a 300kW DC rapid charger because we don't use DC rapid chargers at home (I'm sure there is someone that has installed a DC home charger!).
A home charger can cost in the range of £899 to £1149 depending on the one you install. I spoke about this in the recent post 'Charging an EV' where it discussed the time to pay off the cost of installing you're own home charger. In that post I talked about the mileage it would take to pay off the charger compared to the cost per mile of a petrol car.
If we said we would charge 7p/kWh to pay off the cost of installing a home charger the cheapest home charger via Octopus Energy (Ohme ePod - £899) would take 12,842kWh before the install cost was paid off. Thats the equivalent of 51,368 miles at 4 miles per kWh!
It could be paid off much quicker if a higher cost was applied. If we compare the pay back period to the equivalent cost of a petrol car of 12p per mile, an Ohme ePod costing £899 installed by Octopus Energy would pay off the charger installation cost within 9,000 miles. That would add around 40p/kWh to the electricity cost, bringing the cost per kWh to 47p to do those 9,000 miles.
For Charge Point Operators the cost of installation and equipment can be much much higher than we pay for a home charger. That cost has to be covered by the price they charge per kWh as its the only source of income for a CPO. An example of higher installation costs would be Osprey who spent £250,000 for cable route and ground works alone for their new site in Croydon.
Cost of Installing an electricity supply
With home charging we don't consider the cost of installing an electricity supply because a house is (usually) already connected to mains electricity. The closest we can get for an existing home is an upgrade of the single phase supply to three phase supply. TopCharger.co.uk reckon a standard install cost would be circa £4,000.
Installing grid connections for Charge Point Operators can be much higher for them. Exact figures are difficult to come by but its likely to be many thousands of pounds. There is a very high capital expense installing public charging.
Cost of off street parking
Its clear as we transition to EV's that having a driveway or off street parking where you can install your own EV charger will be a benefit over not having one. Of course there is a cost to able to do this.
The monetary value of a driveway is difficult to put a price on. Many say it could be worth 5-10% of the homes value. Zoopla reckon the average UK homes worth is £268,400 in May 2025. Thats a value of £13,420 to £26,840. Whilst its not one you may think about in the future it may be a big consideration when buying a home.
In comparison a Charge Point Operator will likely need to purchase or rent land to create a EV charging hub. This again adds more cost that will need to be covered by the charging kWh price.
Standing charge
Every home pays a Standing Charge for their electricity connection. For EV charging we don't take this into account because we already pay this in our home's electricity supply. A domestic home can pay a much lower standing charge rate than Charge Point Operator can pay much more.
In October 2025 a domestic home average standing charge is 53.68 p per day or £195.93 per year. In comparison BE EV have a standing charge per day of 683.92p. Thats £2496.30 per year or 12.5 times higher than a domestic home's standing charge rate!
It should also be noted that BE.EV pay 23.25p/kWh for electricity whilst home EV tariff's have a day rate and a low rate. The low rate can be as low as 6-7p/kWh depending on your supplier. Most EV drivers who charge at home will always try to always use the lower overnight rate rather than the day rate, which can be 4 times higher (29.2p/kWh) than the low rate (7p/kWh).
Intelligent Octopus Go variable tariff rates - East England
Be.EV bespoke tariff rates via Octopus Energy
Cost of running a business
Being a CPO means they are a business, which means they have many business costs to cover too. As a business they also have to make profit too (which I doubt many CPO's are doing at present). The p/kWh price we pay at the public charger has to cover costs running a business (offices, utilities, technology infrastructure, IT systems, employee costs etc). Of course we don't have any business related costs to pay with home charging.
It would be great if CPO's listed out the costs that make up the p/kWh so consumers have an idea of how the p/kWh price is made up, but that never going to happen as thats likely to be very sensitive business data that can't be shared amongst the general public.
Personally I don't feel that the cost of home charging is comparable to public charging as they aren't the same thing at all. If I'm out and need to use public charging its because I'm away from home and can't home charge. If there wasn't public charging either I'd never go beyond half the EV's range, or I'd be getting recovered at a very high cost. I find I rarely use public charging so I don't worry too much about the higher cost public charging.