Should my South African business offer workplace or destination EV charging?

Answer first: Match charger speed to dwell time. Eight-hour parking = AC. Thirty-minute pit stop = DC. Oversized DC on a thin supply is how projects stall waiting for a municipal upgrade — and how you burn capital that should have gone into more AC bays and load management.

Workplace vs home vs public vs destination

Dwell-time maths (before you buy hardware)

A staff car with a 50 kWh usable pack that arrives at 40% and needs 80% by 17:00 only needs ~20 kWh. On a 7.4 kW AC wallbox that is roughly three hours of charging — well inside a workday. Pushing that session onto a 60 kW DC pile wastes capital unless the vehicle must leave in under an hour. Survey: vehicles, onboard AC limits, arrival SOC habits, and whether people leave for lunch. Then size AC bays to the diversity you actually see, not to a brochure “one charger per parking bay” sketch.

What businesses should specify

• Load management across every bay so the main breaker does not trip when geysers, HVAC and chargers coincide at 17:00 — load management.
• RFID / app access so staff, guests and visitors are billed (or free-listed) correctly; keep OCPP session logs for finance.
• Solar soak — midday PV surplus into cars before you export at a thin feed-in rate (metro export credits roughly 108–185 c/kWh incl. VAT in 2026/27 — see feed-in).
• CoC and insurance — fixed EVSE is an electrical installation under SANS 10142 practices (EV clause context 6.16.8 in Ed. 3.3 draft enquiry text), not an appliance you hang on a wall without paperwork.
• Notified maximum demand (NMD) headroom — confirm with the landlord / metro before promising twenty simultaneous 22 kW sessions.

Destination charging (mall, hotel, gym, clinic)

Guests care about “does it work when I arrive” more than peak kW. Prefer weatherproof Type 2 AC posts with clear signage, a working app or tap-to-pay path, and a spare bay. Many destination hosts sit on networks such as Chargify (hotel / mall / hospital focus; City Lodge Hotels PR, 29 Jan 2026, claims Chargify is deploying >120 stations nationally — partner PR, not a live pin API), Rubicon Charge, BMW Destination, or host-branded piles mapped via GridCars. Host tariffs vary; do not copy a single corridor DC rate onto a shopping-centre AC post.

Selective DC (one or two CCS2 piles) makes sense where dwell is short — quick-service retail, highway-adjacent hotels — or where the brand promise is “fast top-up while you shop.” For multi-hour cinema or spa parking, AC wins on cost and utilisation.

Battery-buffered DC when the grid is the bottleneck

SAEV Charge (powered by Solar MD) pitches 120 kW+ charging from as little as ~10 kW of grid supply by buffering in an on-site battery — a company claim via SONAH Group’s October 2026 distributor announcement. Physics still caps daily kWh by supply + solar + battery size; confirm on a site survey. See SONAH × SAEV news and fleet charging basics.

Public evidence on tariffs: SAEV’s Richmond DC site at the Solar MD factory has drawn drivers at ~R3.49/kWh (R2.49 when the battery is above 90%) versus GridCars ~R7.35/kWh DC, per DriveElectric / MyBroadband, Oct 2026. Destination hosts set their own rates — do not assume Richmond prices everywhere. If your business hosts public or semi-public DC, price sessions against local metro energy costs and competitor apps, not against one factory-site outlier.

Cost and savings angle

Workplace charging is often a staff benefit and a diesel-avoidance tool, not a profit centre. Price sessions near or below public AC (~R5–R6/kWh on some operator FAQs such as Rubicon’s published examples) if you want utilisation; or recover cost only. Pair with rooftop PV so daytime sessions displace expensive grid peaks. For a commuting EV using ~16–18 kWh per 100 km, home charging on 2026/27 metro rates around R3.30–R4.70/kWh often lands near R53–R85 per 100 km — usually cheaper than public DC and far below inland 95 petrol near R30/ℓ. Workplace AC that soaks surplus PV can undercut even that home rate on sunny weekdays.

Capex bands (illustrative, 2026): AC wallbox hardware often R6k–R22k per bay before install; civil works, DB upgrades and load controllers frequently exceed the sticker on the charger. Budget the soft costs first. All-in home 7 kW projects often land R17k–R35k+; commercial multi-bay jobs scale with trenching, wayleaves and NMD upgrades — get a load study, not a catalogue quote.

Phased rollout that does not embarrass finance

1. Pilot 2–4 AC bays with metering and a hard site amperage cap.
2. Measure diversity for 30–60 days (actual simultaneous kW vs nameplate).
3. Expand AC before adding DC unless turnaround time forces the issue.
4. Only then consider battery-buffered DC if the metro quote for a supply upgrade is worse than storage.

Oversizing civil ducts and cable trays on day one is cheap. Oversizing live electrical capacity on day one is not.

Compliance pack (non-negotiable)

• Registered electrical contractor; CoC per relevant DB section.
• Landlord / parkade / body-corporate approvals in writing.
• Fire plan and insurance notification where required.
• If paralleling large inverters or exporting, follow municipal SSEG / NERSA paths — SSEG steps.

Educational only — not legal or engineering advice. Metro rules and landlord policies decide the live path.

Staff policy that prevents bill shock

Write down whether private cars may use company bays, at what rate, and after which hours. Sub-meter or OCPP session IDs keep SARS / internal recharges cleaner when a company car and a private EV share a parkade. Cap simultaneous charging if the site sits on a TOU commercial tariff with expensive evening peaks. Publish a one-pager in the staff handbook so facilities is not negotiating WhatsApp exceptions every Friday.

Landlord and parkade realities

Many SA offices lease space in multi-tenant parkades where the landlord owns the DB and the parking operator owns the bays. You will need a works permission, a wayleave for cable trays, and clarity on who holds the CoC. If the landlord prefers a single CPO (GridCars host, Rubicon managed site, Chargify destination kit, or similar), compare their session fees against running your own AC bank on a sub-meter. Neither path is automatically cheaper — model kWh × utilisation × five-year maintenance.

Quick FAQ

Do we need CCS2 DC at the office? Only if dwell is short or fleet turnaround demands it. Most staff commuting is AC.
Can we rely on nearby public DC instead? Possible, but public DC often lands ~R6–R8/kWh versus workplace AC that can soak PV.
Is V2G a workplace revenue line yet? Not as a standard metro product — V2H/V2G reality.

Related answers

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