Home charging: the electricity-tax refund explained

Why home charging is cheapest

When you charge at home, you pay your ordinary electricity price — the spot price of power plus grid tariffs and taxes. In practice that typically lands around 2–3 kr per kWh depending on the time of day you charge and which electricity deal you have. That is markedly lower than public charging, where a charging operator's markup sits on top.

That markup is the whole difference: a public charger has to make money on the power, cover the hardware and pay for operations, and it all feeds into the kWh price. At home nobody sells you the power at a profit — you pay the plain cost price for the electricity.

You can push the price down further by charging when power is cheapest. The spot price swings hour by hour, and it is typically lower at night and outside peak hours. With a home charger or an electricity plan that charges by hourly price, you can set the car to charge when power is cheap — without having to watch it yourself.

Refunding the electricity tax

On top of the low electricity price comes an option many people overlook: refunding the electricity tax. With a home-charger agreement through a charging operator, you can get most of the electricity tax refunded for every kWh you charge at home. The refund is typically around 1 kr per kWh, but the amount follows the politically set tax rate and changes when that rate changes — so treat the figure as a guide, not a guarantee.

To get the refund you usually need a subscription with a service agreement, where the operator meters how much power passes through your home charger. It is that metering that documents the consumption to the authorities so the tax can be sent back. The math is worth knowing: a refund of around 1 kr per kWh can pull a home price of 2–3 kr down towards 1–2 kr per kWh — a third to a half of the price.

• It typically requires an approved home charger with a meter, so the consumption can be documented.
• The refund is normally paid out via the electricity bill or through the charging operator, depending on the agreement.
• The rate is set politically and can change — the amount per kWh is not fixed.

What does your home share mean for your choice?

The larger the share of your charging that happens at home, the less power you have to buy in public — and the less public prices matter for your overall charging economy. If you charge mostly at home, an expensive public subscription becomes harder to pay off, because you simply do not charge enough away to let the discount cover the monthly fee.

It is not entirely black and white, though, because some subscriptions refund home charging too and factor it into their model. With a high home share, such a subscription can still make sense, while a subscription that only applies to the operator's public chargers is quickly wasted. That makes your home share one of the most important dials to turn when you weigh up what is cheapest for you specifically.

No home charger?

If you live in an apartment block or a rental without your own home charger, the math looks different. Then destination charging — at work, the shopping centre or other places you park for a while — together with public AC charging effectively becomes your "home charging". You do not have access to the cheapest cost-price power, and you can rarely get the electricity tax refunded, because there is no meter on a home charger you control yourself.

In return, subscriptions weigh more heavily in your math, precisely because all of your charging happens out and about. When you buy all your power in public anyway, a subscription with a low kWh price or free charging on a network that covers your regular spots can make a noticeable difference. Here the choice is less about home share and more about which network sits best relative to where you park day to day.