TurningCircle
12 November 2026updated 16:05

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Charging

Rapid charging could hit £1.03 a kWh as fixed grid charges rise

The fixed grid charge on a standard rapid charger rose from £61.47 a week in 2021 to £440.13 this year, and the report behind the figures sees £1.03 a kWh next.

By The TurningCircle Team 5 min read

One number explains why a rapid charger costs what it does. The fixed grid charge on a standard rapid charger rose from £61.47 a week in 2021 to £440.13 this year, according to an impact assessment published by The Fast Charge with the charging operator Zest, and it falls due whether a car plugs in or not. Tariffs already published for 2027 put the same charger at £77.39 a day.

The assessment carries that through to the price at the plug. At a rapid charger dispensing 3,000 kWh a month, it estimates the cost of supplying a kilowatt-hour could reach £1.03 next year, before VAT and before any of the operator's own running costs. Zapmap's average price for rapid charging is 79p.

The fixed charge is for capacity, not for electricity

The mechanism dates to Ofgem's Targeted Charging Review, decided in December 2019, which moved the residual cost of the electricity networks into fixed charges. For businesses, distribution charges have worked that way since 2022, set by the capacity a site has agreed to keep available rather than by the units it uses. A 150 kW charger has to reserve capacity for its peak output, not for its average use.

That is the mismatch the report is built on. A rapid charger's costs are sized for its busiest hour, while its revenue follows its footfall, and the two have drifted apart as the fixed element grew. The weekly figure is now seven times the 2021 level, an increase of 616%.

What £1.03 does to a fill-up

A 10 to 80 per cent charge on a 60 kWh battery takes 42 kWh. At today's 79p average that is £33.18. At £1.03 it is £43.26, so £10 more for the same stop. On a car that manages 3.5 miles to the kWh, 79p works out at about 23p a mile and £1.03 at about 29p.

Sites built around 350 kW hardware are more exposed than the model site, because the fixed charge scales with the capacity reserved rather than the energy sold. The report expects those to reach £1 a kWh sooner.

Six pence left to run a site

The assessment uses two Zest sites to show what remains after energy and grid costs. At an urban charging hub in Birmingham those two items take 48p of the 58p a driver pays per kWh before VAT, leaving 10p. At an on-street ultra-rapid charger in London they take 58p of 64p, leaving 6p.

That remainder has to cover the power connection, land rent, civil engineering, planning and legal fees, the hardware, back office systems, driver support, any revenue share with the landlord or council, and maintenance. Zest puts operating costs at 6p to 10p per kWh depending on location, which at the London site is at least as much as the margin left before those bills are paid.

Robin Heap, founder and chief executive of Zest, said the switch to capacity-based network charges "was never intended to put the brakes on EV adoption". For public charging, he said, it "has created an egregious cost burden that pushes up prices for drivers and means many otherwise investable charging projects are delayed or shelved."

Jarrod Birch, head of policy at the trade body ChargeUK, told Auto Express that operators in "a largely pre-profit sector" increasingly "do not have the option to swallow further cost", leaving them to raise prices or scale back investment.

The £100 million misses these chargers

The Budget put £100 million over two years from spring 2027 into local, lower-powered public charging, the residential street units where a car sits for hours or overnight. The government says those make up around a third of the network and that the support will save a driver who relies on them about £150 a year. Rapid chargers sit outside the scheme.

The same release sets out the scale of the problem the money is answering. In real terms, average prices have risen 69% at lower-powered chargers and 94% at higher-powered ones since 2021.

VAT is the other gap. Public charging carries 20%, while domestic electricity is zero-rated, and the Budget did not close that difference. Our guide to what a kilowatt-hour actually costs sets out the spread that sits behind the averages, and the tracker we keep on public prices shows how little the headline number has moved this year.

Two rule changes have waited three years

The assessment says two modifications that would cut grid charges for charging, DCP 420 and DCP 454, have sat in industry working groups for three years without reaching Ofgem for a decision. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act include a 2025 briefing in which Ofgem told the Treasury that high fixed grid charges were keeping rapid chargers in an "unproductive cycle" with a "high cost per customer".

Tom Riley, who wrote the report and edits The Fast Charge, said: "Grid standing charges are effectively a feudal tax, enabled by Ofgem without proper thought, with money going from a driver's pocket straight to energy networks." He added that the government's own charging review had confirmed what the networks had been warning about, and that "Ofgem has known about this problem for at least a year. It's time to fix it."

Auto Express reported that it had approached the government and Ofgem for comment.

What it means for a driver

About a third of UK households have no off-street parking, which is the group most exposed to these prices. For those with a driveway the arithmetic is different, and the same government release says cross-pavement charging, free of planning permission in England since 21 October, lets some households charge at home for as little as 2p a mile.

The advice for anyone relying on the public network does not change. A rapid is the most expensive way to buy electricity, and a slower charger at a place you were already parking costs less, which is why the cheapest habit is charging where you stop anyway.

What has changed is the risk inside the numbers. A driver budgeting on 79p is budgeting on a price that the cost base at a quiet rapid site is already struggling to cover, and the 2027 tariffs are published rather than hypothetical. Whether that reaches the plug depends on decisions Ofgem has not yet taken.

Sources