Why every new charging point raises your electricity bill for a full year
Dear readers,
Imagine ten new charging points go into operation at your site next month. Do you know what happens at your grid connection in the first quarter of an hour afterwards?
The question sounds like a detail for the electrical engineer to handle. Yet the answer determines what you will pay in grid fees this billing year and the ones that follow. Grid operators do not bill you on how evenly your business draws power — they bill you on the highest measured quarter-hour value. A single unfortunate moment in which many vehicles charge at maximum power simultaneously is enough, and that figure is locked in. This is where peak shaving comes into play.
Storage and charging points are growing faster than grid connections
Two figures show just how sharply the load profile of German businesses is currently shifting. In the first quarter of 2026, around 2.2 gigawatt hours of new battery storage capacity were connected to the grid nationwide, roughly 38 percent more than in the same quarter of the previous year. On top of that, the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) listed a good 209,000 publicly accessible charging points with a combined charging capacity of 9.04 gigawatts (as of 1 July 2026). Whatever sits in company car parks and logistics halls is not even included in these numbers.
Large-scale projects are rarely the cause. Usually it is individual, well-justified decisions that add up: the vehicle fleet switches to electric drive, the new photovoltaic system delivers more at midday than the site consumes, a storage unit is added, and perhaps industrial trucks with lithium-ion batteries have been procured as well. Every step makes sense on its own. Together, they fundamentally change a company’s load curve — that is, the sequence of power drawn over the course of the day.
What an energy optimisation system does, and why it pays off
An energy optimisation system continuously monitors power consumption, calculates the trend within the current measurement period and intervenes before the agreed power limit is exceeded. The background: alongside the energy price per kilowatt hour, commercial and industrial customers pay a demand charge based on the highest quarter-hour demand within the billing period. Market rates are typically around 100 euros per kilowatt per year. Run the numbers for your own operation: if ten charging points at 22 kilowatts each start up at the same time and — only proportionally — 150 kilowatts of that hit the critical quarter hour, that moment costs roughly 15,000 euros. Not once, but for as long as it takes for a new year to begin. We have used a worked example to show how much difference even moderate smoothing makes.
Where uncontrolled charging gets genuinely expensive in day-to-day operations
A haulage company electrifies its delivery fleet. At around 5 p.m., eight vans return, the drivers plug them into the charging stations, and because nobody has configured any control logic, all eight immediately draw full power. At the same time, the refrigeration unit in the warehouse is running flat out because the doors stood open all afternoon while new goods were being stored. The annual peak arises on a Tuesday in July, without anyone noticing.
The metalworking company with twelve lithium-ion forklifts is a similar case. The technology works around 30 percent more efficiently than lead-acid batteries and allows brief opportunity charging during breaks. That is precisely where the catch lies: from now on, the fleet charges at shift handover — exactly when equipment is starting back up anyway. A night-time base load becomes a midday peak.
The third case is particularly frustrating. A company invests in a battery storage system but operates it in isolation, purely to optimise self-consumption. It charges when the sun shines and discharges when it does not. It knows nothing about the expensive demand peak on Tuesday afternoon and cannot counteract it. The capital is tied up, and the demand charge stays exactly where it was.
What changes as soon as storage and charging points join in
Once the energy optimisation system knows about the charging infrastructure and storage, the possibilities widen considerably. Charging processes can be throttled continuously instead of being switched off abruptly: every vehicle keeps charging, just more slowly. Priority lists ensure that the forklift needed for the early shift takes precedence, while the company car parked until Friday charges at a slower rate. During the critical quarter hour, the storage unit supplies power from the battery and reduces the draw from the grid without bringing any process to a halt. Specialists call this peak shaving — capping the demand peak. Our practical examples show how the starting points differ from industry to industry.
The second effect concerns infrastructure. If the grid connection is not sufficient on paper for the planned charging capacity, the grid operator will require an upgrade along with a connection cost contribution, and such amounts quickly reach five- or six-figure sums. A controlled operation, in which all loads never draw full power simultaneously, often makes this upgrade unnecessary. Storage thus turns from a cost item into a tool that replaces investment in copper and transformer stations.
A third point is easily overlooked: generation systems belong in the system too. If the control system knows how much power the photovoltaic system is delivering in this particular quarter hour, it can deliberately shift charging into the midday hours and increase self-consumption, instead of feeding solar power into the grid for a few cents and buying it back at a premium in the evening. There are also regulatory levers that many leave untouched: anyone who demonstrably reduces consumption during the published peak load time windows can negotiate a reduced grid fee for atypical grid usage; anyone with a particularly even consumption pattern may qualify for an individual grid fee. Both require you to be able to control your power draw. The load curve then simply serves as evidence, which the energy supplier checks for compliance.
The question is no longer whether a business controls its loads, but how early it starts doing so.
Why the window is closing right now
Two developments are increasing the pressure to act. New electricity storage systems that go into operation by 4 August 2029 remain exempt from grid fees on the stored electricity for 20 years under Section 118(6) of the German Energy Industry Act (EnWG); for later installations, this privileged treatment no longer applies. A storage unit that feeds charged electricity back into the grid unchanged is exempt from these grid fees, because the same electricity would otherwise be charged twice. Commercial storage systems, however, rarely work in such clear-cut terms. Sometimes they cover the site’s own consumption in production, sometimes they feed back into the grid. The legislation does not conclusively clarify how this mixed use is to be treated, and specialists still assess the question differently today.
How the rule should be applied to hybrid use — where part of the electricity is consumed on site rather than fed back — remains legally disputed to this day.
In parallel, the Federal Network Agency is working on a framework in its AgNES project that will also make grid fees time-dynamic from 2029. Those who draw power flexibly will pay less; those who consume rigidly during peak periods will pay twice over. We have described what this means for procurement in our article on dynamic electricity prices. Equipment procured today without a control interface can only be retrofitted later at considerable expense. Grants for metering technology and intelligent load control are available through BAFA funding module 3; the application must be submitted before work begins.
multimax 6.0: from bespoke solution to a simple setting
The multimax energy optimisation system has been controlling loads via analogue outputs for decades, meaning it regulates continuously rather than merely switching on and off. Until now, we have integrated charging stations via the multisio-IGW gateway using Modbus, an established protocol through which devices from different manufacturers exchange measured values and control commands. Battery storage systems have so far been integrated into multimax through customer-specific bespoke solutions.
With the forthcoming device generation, integrating battery storage becomes standard as well. At the heart of this development is the latest generation of the IGW 3, an intelligent gateway that takes on several previously separate tasks: it visualises the multimax in the web interface, controls battery storage, charging stations and other equipment via Modbus, and comes with a VPN tunnel for secure service access. It runs on multiOS, KBR’s own Linux, whose advantage becomes particularly clear over the long term: KBR itself decides on software maintenance and further development, rather than an external provider. As a result, the system runs more reliably and more predictably.
In day-to-day operation, this mainly means less effort for you. Additional functions can be retrofitted quickly via the multiapp-MT, without any device leaving your premises. The extended user management allows individual accounts with graded permissions, so that parameterisation stays where it belongs. You install updates at the push of a button or offline via a USB stick, with a safety mechanism preventing a failed update from rendering the device unusable. You can always access the current version of the operating manual via a web link. In essence, this means retrofits and adaptations to new equipment can be handled on site in future — no return shipping and no weeks-long gap in optimisation. Development and manufacturing continue to take place in Schwabach; how it all fits into an energy data management system is shown by the interplay with visual energy and our reference projects.
What this means for existing installations
Your next step: measure first, then invest
Before discussing technology, it is worth looking at the data. A free, detailed load curve analysis reveals when your most expensive quarter hours occur. On request, we will produce this analysis for you free of charge; the biggest savings often lie somewhere other than expected. Technical details on the existing system can be found in our energy optimisation brochure.
If you already operate a generation 5 multimax, there are two routes to the new functions. Either you replace it with a new device and benefit from all the new functions straight away, or a firmware update to your existing device can be carried out on site in Schwabach. Which route is more economical depends on the age of the device, its configuration and your own plans. Talk to your sales contact early, and the changeover can be scheduled alongside maintenance that is due anyway.
The new multimax generation is coming soon. If you would like to stay up to date, subscribe to the KBR technical report or follow us on LinkedIn. And if charging points, forklifts or a storage system are currently being planned at your site: right now, controllability can still be built into the plan at no extra cost. Get in touch with your KBR contact or write to info@kbr.de. For over 40 years, we have been helping companies make their energy flows visible and controllable. The equipment changes; the underlying arithmetic stays the same. Anyone who knows when their most expensive quarter hour occurs can prevent it.
We look forward to supporting you on your path to maximum energy efficiency and lasting cost savings.
Yours, Jonas Klaus
Technical Editor
KBR GmbH