Overseas charging piles of the same power are priced several times higher than those in China. For instance, a 120 kilowatts DC charging pile overseas costs around 464,000 yuan ($64,000), significantly more than the 30,000 to 50,000 yuan price range in China, according to a report of Industrial Securities.
Proportionally, a 30-kW charger will cost 51,600 RMB yuan in accordance with the exchange rate on the standard date 4. In China market, the price of a 30-kW charger turned out to be approximately 23,400 RMB yuan. Averaging the 2 prices inside and outside China, a 30-kW charger costs 37,500 RMB yuan.
In Wuhan, the current charging price is approximately 0.945 RMB yuan (kWh) −1. Fair pricing is a basic problem in the electricity market. Unbalanced supply and demand requires TOU pricing, whereas the use of hydro-electric power causes issues related to flood-dry seasonal pricing.
Therefore, all the charging stations in Beijing take a considerable proportion of 1% of the whole city, both on electricity consumption and instantaneous power demand. To reduce electricity purchase costs, charging stations should consider joining forces to some extent and apply for price discounts as key customers.
First, ensuring a high station load is helpful to increase profits, and it is estimated the reasonable number of chargers in Beijing is approximately 6000, distributed among 672 stations. Second, the use of storage batteries for on/off-peak electricity self-management can also increase the annual profit by 600,000 RMB yuan.
The number of electric vehicles in China is expected to grow rapidly, triggering the nationwide large-scale construction of charging stations. At the same time, a reasonable charging price has not been established. This article records the views of station operators and EV users and calculates a charging pricing range.