A guide for residents, garage owners and building managers: how charging electricity is measured, at what price it is reimbursed, what it really costs and why metered reimbursement is not selling electricity.
Translated from Serbian. Prices, quotes from company websites and data are given in English for convenience; where the exact wording matters, the Serbian original applies.
Short answer: the electricity is paid for by whoever charges the car — exactly as much as they use, at the price on the actual bill, with no markup. The only way to make that both fair and verifiable is a separate MID-certified meter on the charger's circuit. Everything else (“guesswork”, a flat fee, a shared socket) stops working after the first winter bill.
The socket in the garage runs off the building's shared meter, the car charges at night, and the bill for common-area consumption goes up for everyone. The neighbours notice within two months, the building manager gets a complaint, and the next assembly meeting ends with a ban. This is how most stories about “the building that said no” begin — and rightly so.
It sounds practical, but it is not based on any figure: in winter you charge more, in summer less, and a new car uses a different amount. One side always overpays, the other underpays, and the building manager has nothing to put in the books. It works for three months, then turns into an argument.
A separate MID-certified meter is installed on the charger's circuit. It is read once a month, the consumption is multiplied by the kilowatt-hour price from the actual bill of whoever owns the meter the electricity runs through — the garage owner or the building — and the amount is reimbursed with a statement. No markup, no estimates, with a paper trail. This is the only method that owners and building managers accept without resistance, because it creates neither risk nor work for them.
The cleanest option: if it is technically feasible, the charger's circuit runs from your flat's meter. Then there is no reimbursement at all — you pay your EPS bill as before, and the MID-certified meter lets you see exactly how much the car uses. Whether it is feasible depends on the cable length and the connection capacity; this becomes clear during the assessment.
MID is the European Measuring Instruments Directive (2014/32/EU). A meter with the MID marking is factory-verified for billing: its readings are a valid basis for one party to charge another for electricity. EPS uses exactly this kind of meter too. A meter without that marking — a cheap counter bought online, a “power meter” in the charger's app, a CT sensor for load management — shows an approximate value and is for information, not for billing.
In practice, a MID-certified meter looks like a small module on a DIN rail in the distribution board, with a display and the option of remote reading (Modbus / OCPP). Some chargers have one built into the device itself — all that matters is that it bears the MID marking and an accuracy class (B or 1). Three things a MID-certified meter solves at once:
Households in Serbia pay for electricity by consumption zone and tariff. Since 1 October 2025 the price of active energy (excluding network charges, fees, excise duty and VAT) has been as follows; the blue zone covers up to 1.200 kWh a month under an amended methodology in force until the end of 2026:
| Zone (monthly) | High tariff (day) | Low tariff (night) |
|---|---|---|
| Green — up to 350 kWh | 9,6136 RSD/kWh | 2,4034 RSD/kWh |
| Blue — 351 to 1.200 kWh | 14,4203 RSD/kWh | 3,6051 RSD/kWh |
| Red — over 1.200 kWh | 28,8407 RSD/kWh | 7,2102 RSD/kWh |
Added to the bill are the network access charge (mrežarina, also by tariff), excise duty of 7,5 %, fees and VAT of 20 %. That is why a night-time kilowatt-hour in the blue zone, with everything that goes on the bill, works out at roughly 4–7 RSD — while a daytime one in the red zone can exceed 40. Hence two practical rules:
For comparison: 240 kWh at public fast chargers at 70–91 RSD/kWh is 17.000–22.000 RSD a month. At home, at night, 1.000–1.700 RSD. That difference is why a kit with a meter pays for itself in 3–9 months — work out your own figure with the calculator.
Selling electricity is a licensed supply activity — none of us does that, and none of us needs to. What happens in a building's garage or in a rented garage is something else: the electricity still runs through the existing meter (yours, the owner's or the building's), and you reimburse the actual cost to the meter's owner, based on the measured consumption and at the price on their bill, with nothing added. This is cost re-invoicing (prefakturisanje) — the same logic by which a tenant pays for electricity in rented business premises, or the costs of common-area consumption are shared among residents. For a building, it is a cost allocation by decision of the residents' assembly; for a garage owner, an item in the lease agreement.
Article 210v of the Energy Law regulates the charging service in public places — your garage is not one. Three things that are nevertheless not allowed, and that you will recognise when someone offers them to you: a markup on the kilowatt-hour (“you'll pay me 15 dinars per kWh” when the bill says 6), a flat-rate “sale” of electricity without a meter, and billing at a tariff that does not come from the actual bill. If the owner wants more money for the use of the space, the right place for that is the rent — not the price of electricity.
How Evolako does it. We do not sell electricity — we measure it. We charge for the equipment, the installation and the service, not for kilowatts. A MID-certified meter is included in every package, and billing is at the price on the EPS bill of whoever owns the meter the electricity runs through, with no markup. A monthly statement document goes to you and to the owner or building manager; the first 2 months are free, after that it is part of the 1.690 RSD subscription.
Here is the statement that the garage owner or building manager receives every month. The kilowatt-hour price is calculated from the actual bill: the bill's total amount divided by the total consumption on that bill — so including network charges, fees and VAT, with nothing added.
User: [name], parking space no. 14 · Meter: MID, serial no. [___], class B
Meter reading on 01.10.2026: 1.234,5 kWh · Reading on 31.10.2026: 1.474,5 kWh · Consumption: 240,0 kWh (of which low tariff 231 kWh, high tariff 9 kWh)
Supplier's bill for the building's meter, October 2026: total 8.640 RSD for 1.410 kWh → average price 6,13 RSD/kWh (including all fees and VAT)
Reimbursement amount: 240,0 kWh × 6,13 RSD/kWh = 1.471 RSD
Payment: homeowners' association account [___], payment reference [___], due within 15 days. Attachment: photo of the meter display on the day of reading.
The figures in the example are illustrative; the structure is real. If the circuit runs from your flat's meter, the statement is only for your own records — there is no reimbursement.
If it is technically feasible — yes, and it is the cleanest option: no reimbursement to anyone, you pay your own EPS bill. It depends on the cable length from your distribution board to the parking space, the connection capacity (typically 5,75 kW single-phase or 11–17 kW three-phase) and whether the cable can be routed neatly through the common areas — which requires an assembly decision. All of this becomes clear during the assessment.
It almost always pays off: having EPS replace the meter costs in the order of 1.000–2.000 RSD, and the difference between the day and night price is threefold. A charger that runs at night on a single-tariff meter pays the full price for every kilowatt-hour.
It depends on the household's consumption. An average flat using 300–400 kWh plus 240 kWh of charging ends up in the blue zone (up to 1.200 kWh). The red zone starts above 1.200 kWh — that is where households that heat with electricity or drive a lot end up. Even then, the night tariff remains several times cheaper than a public charger.
You, the owner or the building manager — the meter has a display and is read like any other. With a subscription, reading and billing are automatic, and the statement arrives every month without anyone having to step in.
That is a markup on electricity, and legally it is slippery ground. Propose a different arrangement: the electricity is reimbursed exactly according to the meter and the bill, and whatever extra the owner wants goes into the rent as a fee for a space with a charger. Same money, clean paperwork.
No — there is no new connection and no new meter; the existing one is used. A separate EPS meter for the garage would be a new connection, which is expensive (in the order of 100.000 RSD or more) and unnecessary for a single charger. The MID sub-meter is yours, behind the EPS meter.
A MID-certified meter comes with every one of our packages, and monthly billing is at the price on the EPS bill, with no markup. Check what is possible in your garage — or write to us.
BlokVolt is an independent guide to electric cars in Serbia: companies, prices, procedures, regulations and figures — all with a source and a check date. The site is run by the team behind Evolako, which installs chargers itself; in comparisons it is marked as “our offer” and shown in the same columns as every other company.