One 15-Minute Spike Can Double a Truck Depot's PG&E Bill

A single quarter-hour over its subscribed kilowatts can cost a truck depot $382 on Pacific Gas and Electric's commercial EV charging rate — exactly twice what the subscription itself costs. That's the arithmetic behind PG&E's Business Electric Vehicle (BEV) tariff in force since March 1, 2026, and it turns dispatch timing into a line item on the electric bill.

The mechanism is simple. PG&E's BEV schedule replaces the conventional demand charge with a monthly subscription bought in kilowatt blocks. Run past that subscription, and the utility bills the excess at $3.82 per kW on the larger secondary-voltage option — precisely double the $1.91 per kW the subscription works out to. The meter measures demand in 15-minute intervals, and the utility charges one overage per billing period, based on the month's highest reading.

A truck that rolls in two hours late and plugs in alongside the rest of the shift can set the month's overage on its own.

How the subscription tiers work

PG&E splits the schedule into two options:

• BEV-1: customers at or below 100 kW; subscriptions sold in 10 kW blocks at $12.41 each.
• BEV-2: loads at or above 100 kW; 50 kW blocks priced at $95.56 for secondary voltage and $85.98 for primary or transmission voltage. The overage fee on every option is double the informational per-kW subscription price.

Energy is priced separately by time of use. Peak runs 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. every day of the year, weekends and holidays included. Super off-peak covers 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., and off-peak spans the overnight stretch most depots already use, 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. Overnight charging gets the cheaper energy price. It does nothing for the subscription if too many trucks pull power in the same 15 minutes.

What does one crowded night cost?

Take a four-truck depot on 50 kW chargers. If software staggers charging two at a time, the site peaks at 100 kW and subscribes to two BEV-2 blocks for $191.12 a month. Now suppose late returns put all four trucks on chargers in the same quarter-hour. The meter reads 200 kW. The 100 kW above subscription costs $382 — twice the subscription itself.

The billing rule has one mercy. Overage is charged once per month, on the highest reading. In the rate sheet's own example, a customer subscribed at 60 kW who hits 61 kW and later 65 kW pays for 5 kW of overage, not 6. A second bad night at the same level adds nothing. The first one is what scheduling software is supposed to stop — and the meter's interval data is the record a buyer can check a vendor's claims against.

Three months of grace, then the level locks

PG&E waives overage fees for three billing cycles after a customer joins a BEV rate, and it opens a fresh grace period when an enrolled customer reports added charging equipment that raises load. If a site still exceeds its subscription in the third cycle, the utility may reset the subscription in the fourth month to cover that overage, rounded up to the next block. Once a grace period ends, customers can change levels again only after three consecutive billing cycles.

Those three months produce a depot's actual peak under actual dispatch, penalty-free, before the subscription locks. Fleet charging platforms pitched to school districts and trucking companies since at least 2022 have promised to schedule sessions around energy prices. A grace-period meter log shows whether one held the line at a specific site.

The wider California picture

The cost signal lands as the buildout accelerates. The South Placer Municipal Utility District, a Placer County sewer agency, adopted a Fleet Transition Master Plan under Resolution 26-10 on a 3-1 board vote. Gurbir Antaal of DKS Associates, who presented the plan, told directors most of the cost comes at the outset to prepare facilities for electric vehicles, and that chargers last eight to 10 years on average. Vice President Mitchell asked about protecting the new equipment, citing recent vandalism. The district had briefed its board on California's Advanced Clean Fleets rules in May 2024.

California's latest charging infrastructure assessment expects fleet depots to carry much of the electrical buildout through 2030, and a separate report found Seattle needs grid upgrades to serve EV charging demand. PG&E's subscription design pushes part of that cost down to the individual depot — with no customer-level overage data in the public rate sheet to show whether a given fleet can live within a chosen block.

The current BEV prices took effect March 1 through an advice letter filed with the California Public Utilities Commission. Any 2027 change to block or overage prices would come the same way, so fleets setting subscription levels for next year can watch PG&E's CPUC filings before the grace period on new chargers runs out.