A Single 15-Minute Spike Sets a Fleet Depot's Overage Fee

One quarter-hour over the subscribed kilowatts sets a depot's monthly overage charge, which puts dispatch timing on the electric bill.

At a truck depot on Pacific Gas and Electric's (PG&E) commercial charging rate, the busiest quarter-hour of the month sets the overage charge. The utility's Business Electric Vehicle (BEV) rate schedule replaces the conventional demand charge with a monthly subscription bought in blocks of kilowatts (kW). When a depot runs past that subscription, PG&E bills the excess at $3.82 per kW on the larger secondary-voltage option, exactly twice the $1.91 per kW the subscription itself works out to.

The rate sheet in force since March 1, 2026 measures demand in 15-minute intervals and charges one overage per billing period, based on the month's highest reading. For fleet managers weighing a charging-software renewal or a few more chargers for 2027, that structure turns dispatch timing into a line on the electric bill. 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 PG&E's BEV Subscription Bills a Depot PG&E splits the schedule into two tiers. BEV-1 serves customers at or below 100 kW and sells subscriptions in 10 kW blocks at $12.41 each. BEV-2 covers loads at or above 100 kW in 50 kW blocks, priced at $95.56 for secondary-voltage service 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. The peak window runs from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. every day of the year, including weekends and holidays. Super off-peak pricing applies from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m ., and the off-peak hours cover the overnight stretch most depots already use, from 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.

One Crowded Quarter-Hour on a Four-Truck Depot Take an illustrative depot with four trucks on 50 kW chargers. If software staggers charging two at a time, the site peaks at 100 kW and can subscribe to two BEV-2 blocks for $191.12 a month. Now suppose late returns on a single night put all four trucks on chargers in the same quarter-hour. The meter records 200 kW. Under the tariff, the 100 kW above the subscription costs $382 for that billing period, twice what the depot paid for the subscription itself.

Overage is billed once per month, on the highest reading. In the example printed on the rate sheet, 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 the vendor's claims against.

PG&E's Three-Month Grace Period and Subscription Reset 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 their level again only after three consecutive billing cycles.

Those three months produce a depot's actual peak under actual dispatch, with no penalty attached, before the subscription level locks in. Fleet charging platforms that schedule sessions around energy prices have been pitched to school districts and trucking companies since at least 2022. A grace-period meter log shows whether one held the line at a specific site.

A Placer County Fleet Plan and California's Charging Forecast 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 that 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. A separate report found Seattle needs grid upgrades to serve electric vehicle charging demand. PG&E's subscription design pushes part of that cost signal down to the individual depot.

Nothing in the public rate sheet shows whether a given fleet can live within a chosen block, and the tariff carries no customer-level overage data . The current BEV prices took effect March 1 through an advice letter filed with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Any 2027 change to the block or overage prices would come the same way, and fleets setting subscription levels for next year can watch PG&E's advice letter filings before the grace period on new chargers runs out.

A Single 15-Minute Spike Sets a Fleet Depot's Overage Fee

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