How to Bill Tenants for EV Charging in California

Why EV Billing Is Its Own Question

Most of what California says about billing tenants for electricity is about limits. A landlord who takes power on a master meter and passes it through to residential tenants must charge each tenant the same rate the utility would have charged them directly (Public Utilities Code §739.5), with no separate billing or admin fee. In PG&E, SCE and SDG&E territory, commercial tenants generally cannot be submeter-billed for electricity at all; it has to be absorbed in the rent. And allocating electricity by formula (RUBS) is effectively ruled out for residential and commercial property alike. Our landlord submetering guide and RUBS vs. submetering cover those rules in full.

EV charging is the exception. The Legislature and the utilities both decided that selling electricity as vehicle fuel is different from reselling household power, and they wrote that into the tariffs. That gives owners more room with EV billing than with anything else on the electric side, but not unlimited room. The rest of this guide covers what the carve-out does, what it leaves open, and which billing model fits your property.

The Four Billing Models

Every EV billing arrangement we see is a variation on one of these four. They differ in who measures the energy, who sends the bill, and how much compliance work lands on you.

1. A dedicated submeter on the charger circuit, billed per kWh

A revenue-grade submeter is installed on the circuit feeding a tenant's assigned charger (or a bank of chargers serving one tenant). You read it each billing period and bill the tenant for the kWh it recorded, usually as a line on the rent statement or a separate utility-style bill.

This is the most transparent model. The tenant pays for exactly what their car drew, the reading is tied to a physical meter they can inspect, and the charger itself can be any make, networked or not. It is also the model that fits most naturally alongside existing unit submetering, because the meter, the read schedule and the billing run are all things a submetered building already does.

The trade-off is that you own the compliance. A submeter whose readings set a charge is a commercial measuring device under California's Weights & Measures law, so it must be a type-approved device and it falls under county sealer oversight. You also need someone reading meters and producing bills every cycle, whether that is your staff or a billing provider.

2. A networked or "smart" charger that bills the driver

Networked chargers meter energy inside the unit and bill the driver through an app, account or card, either per kWh or per session. The network collects payment and remits it to you, typically net of its own fees.

This is the least administrative work for the owner: there is no meter to read and no bill to prepare, and the driver sees their cost in the app. It also handles shared chargers well, since whoever plugs in pays for their own session.

The trade-offs are dependence and control. Your billing data lives on a vendor's platform, the price structure is limited to what that platform supports, and a subscription or connectivity problem can stop billing (or charging) until it is fixed. Our API Trap guide covers what that dependence looks like when it goes wrong. On compliance, the charger itself is the measuring device, so a charger that bills per kWh must meet the EVSE requirements in the Weights & Measures section below. If you price per session or by time rather than by energy, confirm with your county sealer how they treat your setup rather than assuming it is exempt.

3. A flat monthly fee, or charging included in rent

The simplest arrangement: the tenant pays a fixed monthly amount for a charging space, or charging is simply part of the rent, and nobody measures anything for billing purposes.

No meter reads, no bills, no disputes over kWh. Free charging, where energy use does not affect what the customer pays, is exempt from the EVSE Weights & Measures rules. For a small number of spaces, or a building where charging is an amenity used to lease units, this can be the right answer.

The risk is that a flat amount does not track use. A tenant who drives far and charges daily pays the same as one who plugs in once a week, and you carry the difference. The safest form is a fixed amount folded into the rent; if you want a separate flat fee, confirm with counsel that it fits the rule below. Either way, do not turn it into an estimate or formula-based share of the building's power bill: California's submeter rule for electricity (4 CCR §4027.5, UR.3.1) requires a dedicated submeter whenever a tenant not served directly by the utility is charged for electricity outside fixed rent, which is exactly why RUBS-style allocation does not work for electricity.

4. The charger on the tenant's own utility meter

In buildings where each unit already has its own utility meter, which California has required for residential units built under permits issued since July 1, 1982, the charger can be wired to the tenant's unit service. The tenant then pays for charging on their own utility bill, and you bill nothing.

This takes the owner out of the billing chain completely. There is no resale, no pricing question and no measuring device of yours in the picture. The limits are physical: it only works where the parking is close enough to the unit's panel and meter to be practical, and the charger's load has to fit within that unit's service. In garden-style buildings with assigned carports it can be straightforward. In a podium garage with a separate meter room, it often is not.

Side by Side

Why EV Is the Exception to California's Resale Limits

Two layers of law make EV billing possible where ordinary electricity resale is not.

The statute. Public Utilities Code §216(i) provides that supplying electricity to the public only for use to charge light-duty plug-in electric vehicles does not, by itself, make someone a public utility. Without it, selling power to drivers could drag an owner into CPUC regulation. One point is genuinely open: the section speaks of supplying "the public," and whether a charger reserved for your own tenants counts as serving the public has not been settled. The tariff exceptions below are what most owners actually rely on.

The tariffs. Each of the three large investor-owned utilities carves EV charging out of its resale and submetering restrictions:

• PG&E Electric Rule 18, section C.6 allows electricity to be resold for EV charging "without regard to this Rule," which lifts Rule 18's usual limits on master-metered and nonresidential resale.
• SDG&E Rule 19, section D.2 makes an exception to its ban on submetering nonresidential service for electricity used "solely as motor fuel for plug-in electric vehicles."
• SCE Rule 18 carries a light-duty EV motor-fuel exception that traces to CPUC Resolution E-4419 (September 8, 2011). Confirm the current Rule 18 wording with SCE for your account.

LADWP is different. LADWP is not regulated by the CPUC, so neither §739.5 nor the investor-owned utility tariffs above govern its customers. LADWP's own Rule 18 prohibits resale but allows submetered pass-through, for residential and commercial units, at no more than LADWP would have charged and with no added fees of any kind. If your property is on LADWP, confirm with LADWP how it treats EV charging before you set up billing.

Weights & Measures: The Meter Has to Be Legal for Trade

Once a charge depends on how much energy a meter records, that meter is regulated the same way a gas pump or a deli scale is. California's Business and Professions Code §12500.5 makes it unlawful to use a device for commercial purposes unless its type has been approved, and "commercial purposes" includes any measurement on which a charge is based.

For the chargers themselves, the governing rule is 4 CCR §4002.11, which adopts NIST Handbook 44 §3.40 (Electric Vehicle Fueling Systems) and has been operative since April 1, 2020. It phases in by charger type and install date:

If you bill from a submeter on the circuit instead, the submeter is the device of record. California's electric submeter tolerance is the same 1% at acceptance and 2% in service (4 CCR §4027), and current or voltage transformers used for billing must be 0.3 accuracy class or better.

County sealers enforce this. County sealers of weights and measures inspect and test commercial devices (Bus. & Prof. Code §12210), and 4 CCR §4070 sets a maximum inspection interval of 10 years for both electric submeters and EVSE. Counties may also charge an annual fee on electric submeters, capped at $3 per submeter per year (§12240(g)). Your county sealer's office is the right place to confirm how your specific charger or submeter will be registered and inspected.

What Can You Charge?

This is the question every owner asks first, and the honest answer is that part of it is unsettled.

The tariff exceptions allow EV resale. What they do not clearly answer is whether §739.5, the statute that requires a residential master-meter landlord to charge tenants "the same rate" the utility would, also caps the price of EV charging at an apartment building. No authority we are aware of has resolved that. Anyone who tells you California lets a landlord set any price for tenant EV charging is stating something the law does not clearly say.

What that means in practice:

• Disclose the price. Put the rate, per kWh or per session, and how it is calculated in writing before the tenant charges, in the lease or a charging addendum.
• Consider billing at or near cost. Many owners bill EV charging at or close to what the power costs them. It keeps the arrangement easy to defend and easy for tenants to accept.
• Get advice before marking up. If you want to price above your cost, especially on a residential property, have counsel review the plan against your utility's tariff and §739.5 first.

On commercial property and LADWP accounts the analysis is different again, so the same advice applies: disclose, and check before you build margin into the price.

Tenants' Right to Install a Charger

Billing is not only a question of what you install. California also gives tenants the right to install their own chargers in many cases, and those statutes say who pays for the power.

Residential: Civil Code §1947.6. For leases executed or renewed on or after July 1, 2015, a landlord must approve a tenant's written request to install a charger. The statute exempts properties with fewer than five parking spaces, leases that do not include parking, and properties where chargers are already provided at 10% or more of the spaces. Rent-controlled properties were exempt only for leases entered into before January 1, 2019. Under §1947.6(g)(5), the tenant pays for the electricity their charger uses, as part of rent.

Commercial: Civil Code §1952.7. Since January 1, 2015, lease terms that prohibit or unreasonably restrict a commercial tenant from installing a charger are void. The statute exempts properties with fewer than 50 parking spaces, and properties that already have at least two chargers per 100 spaces. The tenant pays for the charger's electricity and must carry $1 million in liability insurance.

Either way, a tenant-installed charger still needs a billing method, and the four models above apply. A submeter on the tenant's circuit is often the cleanest way to show exactly what that charger used, and it gives both sides a record if the amount is ever questioned.

The Open-Access Law Does Not Cover Reserved Spaces

Owners sometimes assume that California's EV Charging Stations Open Access Act (Health & Safety Code §44268) governs their tenant chargers. It does not reach that far. The Act covers "publicly available" charging, and spaces reserved for tenants or residents are excluded. If you later open chargers to visitors or the public, that changes, and the Act's requirements then apply to those public chargers.

A Common Mix-Up: The CPUC's EV Submetering Protocol

If you have read about the CPUC "EV submetering protocol," it is easy to assume it governs how landlords bill tenants. It does not. CPUC Decision D.22-08-024 (August 2022) set up a way for a utility to bill its own customer for EV charging using a third-party submeter, so the customer can put their EV load on a separate rate without paying for a second utility meter. It sets accuracy at 2.0% or better for the submeter (1.0% where the meter is built into the charging cord). PG&E adopted the protocol effective June 29, 2023, following CPUC Resolution E-5274 in June 2023.

That is a relationship between a utility and its customer. It does not authorize, regulate or replace landlord-to-tenant billing, which runs on the tariff exceptions, Weights & Measures rules and tenant statutes described above.

Setting It Up: A Practical Checklist

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

All sources accessed September 2026.

• Public Utilities Code §216(i)
• Public Utilities Code §739.5
• Public Utilities Code §780.5
• PG&E Electric Rule 18 (section C.6); SDG&E Electric Rule 19 (section D.2); SCE Rule 18 and CPUC Resolution E-4419 (September 8, 2011); LADWP Rule 18
• CDFA Division of Measurement Standards, EVSE regulation reference (4 CCR §4002.11, NIST Handbook 44 §3.40)
• 4 CCR §4027 and §4027.5 (electric submeters); 4 CCR §4070 (inspection intervals); Business and Professions Code §§12210, 12240(g), 12500 and 12500.5
• Civil Code §1947.6 and Civil Code §1952.7
• Health & Safety Code §44268
• CPUC Decision D.22-08-024 (August 2022); CPUC Resolution E-5274 (June 2023)