EV Charging and Alternative Fuel Feasibility Studies

This page covers public DC fast charging at fuel stations, convenience stores and travel centers, which is where the research found almost all of its evidence. Other alternative fuels (compressed and liquefied natural gas, propane, E85 and hydrogen) appear in the federal station counts by state, updated October 6, 2026 ²⁰, but the research extracted no figures for them, and a study for one of those fuels would start from that state table and the fuel supplier's contract.

A fast charger earns money when a car is plugged in. Its revenue is sessions multiplied by energy per session multiplied by price, less the electricity bill, demand charges, network fees and maintenance. Two dated sources bracket the economics. Peer-reviewed work by NREL authors modeled a corridor fast-charging breakeven price of $0.42 per kWh as a 20-year average ¹. Paren's market data for the first quarter of 2026 show an average price of $0.53 per kWh, stable on the year, with 200 to 220 sessions per port a month and utilization of 15.6%, down from 16.2% a year earlier ².

The two figures are on different bases: one is a modeled lifetime average for a corridor station, the other an observed national average price in one quarter. Read together, they say that the going price clears the modeled breakeven, and that the margin depends on keeping utilization where the market already is. A station at half the national utilization does not earn half the profit; with fixed demand charges and network fees, it may earn none. The research found no published revenue per port and no energy per session, so a study cannot multiply its way to revenue from national figures. It has to use session and energy data from comparable stations near the subject.

Local demand varies more than the national averages suggest. Yesway's securities filing, citing EIA data, put electric vehicles at 1.2% of registered light-duty vehicles in its nine mostly rural Southwest and Midwest states in 2024, half the 2.4% share elsewhere ⁷. The research found no site-level demand metric for charging. A study should therefore pull registrations for the subject's county, the corridor's traffic count and the nearest competing fast chargers, and set utilization below the national figure where registrations are below the national share.

The NREL authors' figures show equipment cost rising from $84,300 per port at 150 kW to $141,900 at 350 kW, and installation from $69,900 to $90,800 ¹. A site host choosing power is choosing between a lower capital cost and the ability to serve newer vehicles faster, which affects how many sessions a port can deliver in a busy hour. The study should state the charger model and power, the number of ports and the vendor's quote, and should show those against the published per-port figures.

What the research could not price is the electrical service. It found no published utility load, transformer or interconnection cost for fuel-site chargers, and no demand-charge benchmark across utilities. It does hold one municipal demand tariff, which shows the structure a lender should ask about. The City of Lockhart, Texas, which sells its own electricity, bills general service demand customers a fixed $33.42 a month, $0.03773 per kWh on the first 20,000 kWh and $5.75 per kW of demand above 40 kW, and adds its purchased power cost to every kWh ²⁴. Under a charge like that, the bill follows the station's peak draw as well as the kWh it sells, so a slow month with a few full-power sessions can still carry a large demand line. Energy prices also differ by state: EIA data compiled by the University of Wisconsin put industrial power at 8.54 cents per kWh in Wisconsin in 2024, against 6.80 cents in Iowa ²⁵. Those are industrial averages, not the commercial tariff a fuel site pays, so they set scale only. Service, interconnection and demand costs depend on the utility, the existing service at the site and the tariff the station will pay, and on some sites they decide the project. A lender should require the utility's written service commitment, the interconnection cost estimate and the applicable commercial tariff before relying on any revenue line.

Chargers on a fuel site sit on property SBA lists as a gas station, a special purpose property ²¹, so the 504 contribution follows the site: 15%, or 20% for a new business ²¹. A new site under 7(a) must reach 1.15x coverage within two years ²¹. Beyond those site rules, the research found no SBA, USDA or bank guidance on charging equipment, no named lender to charging projects and no performance data. Nothing in the rules makes a study compulsory, for chargers or anything else: 13 CFR 120.160(b): SBA may require professional appraisals, a survey, or a feasibility study ²². For the program side, see SBA 7(a) and 504 financing.

In practice, a lender financing a site with chargers asks the study to do three things. Show the store and fuel business carrying debt service with the chargers at low utilization, so the loan does not depend on the newest revenue line. Put the grant in the sources and uses with its payment timing and its clawback or operating conditions. And document the electrical service, because a charger that cannot draw its rated power cannot earn its projected revenue. Where those three are missing, the chargers should be presented as an option the borrower funds after the core loan closes, not as part of the base case.

None of our gas station cases makes EV charging its subject, and none models charger revenue. The closest evidence sits in the competitor censuses. In the Versailles, Ohio case, a stand-alone electric charging listing appears at the campus address of Midmark, the village's anchor employer, alongside three fuel-and-convenience operators; it shows how a charger can enter a small market without a fuel station attached. In the Lockhart, Texas case, the pipeline list includes a planned Buc-ee's at Boerne approved with EV chargers, outside the subject's next ring. And near the Cartersville, Georgia case, an EV battery plant is a demand driver for the exit, a reminder that EV-related industry and EV charging demand are different things.

Our gas station and c-store hub treats charging as an add-on to the fuel formats, and at a fuel site it rarely stands alone. Branded operators are adding grant-funded chargers to existing stations, as the Phillips 66 example on the branded fuel page shows. Interstate megasites now open with chargers in the plan, which the interstate and highway page covers alongside their fueling positions. For a lender, the useful comparison is that chargers add a revenue line with less evidence behind it than either fuel or the store, which is why we underwrite them last.