AGL rethinks night time charger idle fees after bill shock complaint

Inner West Sydney EV owner Roger was surprised to wake up a few days ago and find out that AGL had charged him $31.99 to add 32.34kWh to his car (260% of what he had expected to pay) during an overnight AC power pole mounted kerbside charger session.

Image by - Neerav Bhatt

Roger had been expecting the total price to be about $12.29, considering the advertised AGL AC charger price of 38c/kWh.

Then he remembered that AGL charged idle fees of $3/hr after a 1hr grace period once a car battery was full.

Roger told me that:

"While I think idle fees are necessary during the day, they are impractical overnight. On this instance, my car finished charging after 2:30am which makes for a ridiculous time to disconnect".

"Further, given the car spots are not zoned EV charging only, all I’d have to do is disconnect the cable. I’ve responded to AGL stating exactly this. Without some change it makes night charging completely impractical."

I agree with Roger, idle fees for AC street chargers are only reasonable during daylight hours eg 8am and 7pm.

Outside of daylight hours it's neither fair or realistic to expect people to wake up in the middle of the night, walk in their PJs from their house in the dark to a charger that could be several streets away, just to unplug their car.

Image by - Neerav Bhatt

Initially AGL offered Roger a courtesy one off refund of the $19.60 in idle fees.

However after Roger explained that he thought idle fees at night for kerb side slow chargers were unfair, AGL reconsidered and told him:

Hi Roger, Thank you for your input. removing idle fees for the time being until we are able to develop a more suitable solution of disabling the idle fees during a time window that would not require you to move your vehicle in the middle of the night. Thanks.

It is unknown (but unlikely) that AGL engaged the services of experienced EV owner advocates to comment on their initial fee structure which imposed idle fees 24/7.

If AGL had liaised with experienced EV owner advocates who understand EV owner behaviour and how kerbside charging works, before starting to charge for their service, they would have realised that idle fees at night only make sense for DC fast chargers not slow AC chargers.

Anyone who felt unsafe being by themselves in poorly lit streets outside late at night would be put off from using kerbside AC EV chargers at night altogether, if the charging network expected them to go outside in the dark when everyone was asleep, just to unplug their EV from a pole charger.