LADWP EV Charging Rates: What Charging at Home Costs in Los Angeles in 2026

LADWP does not have a separate EV plan. It takes $0.025 per kWh off charging in the Base period, weekday nights and weekends, if your charger has its own meter on a time-of-use rate. With 2026 prices that nets about 24 cents per kWh through September and about 25.3 cents from October 1, before taxes.

Whether the discount is worth a second meter depends on how much you drive and which tier your house already reaches. Below: how the EV meter is billed, what charging costs by season, the rebates that help pay for the setup, and how LADWP compares with charging elsewhere. LADWP's full rate tables are in our LADWP rates guide, and every utility's prices are in the California utility rate tracker.

How LADWP bills a separately metered EV charger

LADWP's EV rate discount works on a second meter that measures only the charger. The rules, from LADWP's EV and rate pages:

• The charger must be separately metered from your main meter, and the EV meter must be on a time-of-use rate.
• The discount is $0.025 per kWh and applies only to Base-period charging.
• The EV meter has a $10 monthly minimum plus adjustment factors: if its energy charges, not counting adjustment factors, come to less than $10, you pay $10.
• There is no service charge and no ESA adjustment factor charge on the EV discount rate.
• Both residential and business accounts qualify.

Without a second meter, charging simply adds kWh to your house meter at whatever rate the house is on, with no discount.

What an LADWP kWh costs for EV charging in 2026

For a residential account, the time-of-use rate is R-1B. Its periods are the same all year: High Peak weekdays 1 to 5 p.m., Low Peak weekdays 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 5 to 8 p.m., and Base the rest of the time, including weekends. Prices change quarterly as LADWP resets its adjustment factors.

Because the discount applies only in Base, a car set to start charging at 8 p.m. on weekdays, or any time on weekends, gets the lowest price. Charging a car at 3 p.m. on a July weekday costs 35.124 cents with no discount, about 46% more than the discounted Base price.

Is a separate EV meter worth it?

Compare with charging on the house meter. On the standard R-1A rate, a Zone 1 home gets 700 kWh of Tier 1 per two-month bill and pays Tier 2 above that. Adding 300 kWh a month of charging to a home already past Tier 1 costs, from July through September 2026, 32.267 cents per kWh in Tier 2, about $96.80 a month, or 40.968 cents in Tier 3, about $122.90. On a separate EV meter charging in Base, the same 300 kWh is about $72.12, and about $75.94 from October 1, our arithmetic.

So the meter tends to pay when you charge a lot and your house already runs past Tier 1. It pays less for a light driver in a low-use home whose charging would stay in Tier 1 at 26.408 cents. The $250 meter rebate helps with the setup, and LADWP bills homes every two months, so check two bills before deciding; our guide on how often LADWP bills explains how to read them per day.

Rebates for the charger, the meter and the car

How LADWP charging compares

The CPUC Public Advocates Office calculates that an EV getting 100 MPGe matches the fuel cost of a 28 mpg car at about 48.7 cents per kWh when gasoline is $4.60 a gallon. LADWP's discounted Base price is about half that. It is also in the same range as the investor-owned utilities' EV plans: PG&E's EV2-A off-peak price is 22.558 cents, and SCE's TOU-D-PRIME off-peak runs 24 to 26 cents. Public charging prices in Los Angeles are set by each station owner; see ChargePoint cost per kWh in California for how those are built.

If you have or want rooftop solar, LADWP still uses net energy metering, so daytime exports earn credit at your energy price and roll forward to later bills; charging on weekends lets the car use your own solar directly. See solar panels for EV charging and the Los Angeles County solar and bill guide, and for what exports earn at other utilities, selling electricity back to the grid.