EVgo conquers the complexity of bill accuracy
EVgo, one of the nation's largest public DC fast charging networks, works with Arcadia to help manage energy at almost every level: automating utility bill payments across 1,000+ accounts, optimizing tariffs across its growing network, and using its rate database to manage energy costs end-to-end — from bill validation and anomaly detection to long-term cost forecasting and site planning. Arcadia provides accuracy, efficiency, and visibility to help EVgo keep costs in check and manage a complex portfolio with ease.
About
EVgo operates more than 1,200 DC fast charging locations across 47 states. The company is expanding rapidly, with plans to continue significant nationwide growth in the years ahead. Energy costs are among EVgo's largest operating expenses, directly impacting margin and the affordability of EV charging for customers. EVgo began working with Arcadia in early 2021 on tariff intelligence and expanded the relationship to include utility expense management.
Challenge
Managing energy costs at EVgo's scale requires precision across two interconnected problems.
The first is operational. Every month, EVgo receives bills from more than 100 utility vendors across its 1,200+ charging locations, each with its own billing cadence – and each bill carries the potential for errors like incorrect tariff assignments or rate applications. For a company where electricity is both the largest line item and the core customer product, these aren't minor inefficiencies.
The second is strategic. When EVgo evaluates a new charging location, they need to understand what electricity costs will be. What rate applies in that utility territory? What if the site is down the road in a different territory? What if projected peak demand crosses the applicability threshold of the modelled tariff? The same variability follows a site once it's up and running: rates get restructured, utilities reclassify accounts, and the cost factors behind a bill in a regulated market look nothing like those in a deregulated one — making it helpful to have a reliable partner to work with to understand whether an operating site is even on its optimal tariff. Adding to the complexity, utilities are rolling out EV-specific tariffs at a rapid clip, with unique structures like load factor phase-in rates that require fresh analysis every time. Without a reliable, up-to-date rate database, these questions require time-intensive manual research, pulling data from individual utility websites, and building models by hand.
Both problems shared the same root: fragmented energy data and manual workflows.
Solution
Arcadia addresses both challenges through a combination of utility expense management and tariff intelligence, giving EVgo a single relationship that spans the full lifecycle of their energy cost management.
On the operational side, Arcadia automates bill payment across all EVgo's utility accounts through a consolidated pooled payment structure, minimizing manual overhead of tracking individual payments by vendor. Over 80% of EVgo's utility bills are received electronically, accelerating reconciliation and reducing the risk of errors that come with paper-based processing.
EVgo has operational intricacies that Arcadia helps us manage. We receive more than one thousand invoices from over a hundred vendors each month. We’re grateful to work with Arcadia to manage the complexity in utility billing.
On the intelligence side, EVgo uses Signal, Arcadia's industry-leading tariff database and cost calculation engine, to manage energy costs across every dimension of the business: validating bills, forecasting near- and long-term costs, comparing cost drivers across regulated and deregulated markets, pinpointing optimal tariff structures, and modeling costs for sites not yet built. Signal tracks 30,000+ North American tariffs with 75,000+ rate updates every month — including novel, EV-specific structures as utilities roll them out — giving EVgo the precision to validate individual charges on utility invoices against the most comprehensive tariff database in North America. For EVgo, that means bill validation, cost forecasting, and site modeling that used to take hours or days now takes minutes.
"Energy costs are one of our largest operational expenses. Costs vary enormously from site to site — different utilities, different tariffs, different demand profiles. Arcadia enables us to combine detailed billing data with the rate database to verify we're being billed correctly, understand what's driving costs across the network, and calculate costs for sites we haven't yet built."
Natalie Accardo, Director of Energy Procurement, EVgo
Results
Operational efficiency at scale: Arcadia manages bill payment across EVgo's 1,000+ utility accounts, ensuring accurate, and on-time payments.
Billing accuracy and cost recovery: Billing discrepancies are a matter of when, not if. Arcadia's automated checks and AI-powered anomaly detection review every invoice before payment clears, escalating anomalies to analysts for review. In 2025, Arcadia's analysts evaluated 33% of invoices for potential discrepancies, a proactive review process that ensures a thorough examination of any billing issue. Since 2024, that process has recovered more than $91,000 directly for EVgo.
Faster, better-informed cost decisions: Current rate data from Signal enables EVgo's teams to model and forecast energy costs across both operational and prospective locations quickly and accurately, factoring in novel tariff structures, demand charge thresholds, and utility territory boundaries. Work that once took hours or even days of manual research by utility now takes minutes on one continuously updated database.
Intelligence across teams: Signal supports stakeholders across EVgo's organization: public policy teams building the case for novel rate structures, finance teams budgeting for near- and long-term cost forecasts, network planning teams evaluating site economics before breaking ground, and energy teams flagging anomalies between dispensed and reported energy.Is your business looking to drive similar results? If you’re tired of struggling with outdated databases full of inaccurate rate data, contact the Arcadia team to learn how our tools can help.
What comes next
As EVgo's engagement with Arcadia expands, so does access to the platform's full capabilities. With billing, tariff and usage data converging on a single platform, EVgo strengthens its foundation of a highly sophisticated energy strategy: moving from understanding what they're paying today to actively shaping what they'll pay tomorrow.
Get started with Arcadia
