National Grid Massachusetts EV rate analysis.

Why we focus on program design

As we’ve documented throughout Drive Economics, the base utility rate does most of the heavy lifting on EV total cost of ownership. In Massachusetts, that math is complicated by National Grid’s bill structure: distribution rates are set by the utility and reviewed annually, but the Basic Service supply rate resets every six months and swings by 30–50% between the January and July revisions. Layered on top, National Grid offers two philosophically different EV-focused paths that don’t combine well with each other.

The choice comes down to structure. R-2 Time-of-Use shifts your entire household’s rate based on the clock — rewarding you overnight and weekends, but penalizing you across a wide 13-hour weekday peak window that runs from 8 AM to 9 PM. ConnectedSolutions leaves your household rate alone and instead pays you rewards for managed EV charging behavior. For National Grid customers across central Massachusetts, the Merrimack Valley, and metro Boston’s western suburbs, one of these two paths is meaningfully better than the other. The wider peak window on R-2 changes the math versus what we found for National Grid in our companion analysis.

National Grid’s EV options at a glance

Two options exist for National Grid Massachusetts EV owners. Both target the same behavior — shift charging away from weekday daytime hours — but they structure the reward very differently, and the peak window on R-2 is notably wider than most utility TOU rates.

Path 1: R-2 TOU — the whole-household TOU

R-2 restructures your entire household’s distribution rate around the clock. Off-peak (weekday nights from 9 PM to 8 AM, plus all weekends and holidays — roughly 113 of 168 hours per week) distribution drops to approximately $0.045/kWh. Add the Basic Service supply rate of ~$0.155/kWh and you land around $0.20/kWh total for anything charged in that window. That is meaningfully cheaper electricity than the standard R-1 flat rate of ~$0.30/kWh, and slightly cheaper than what National Grid’s R-2 delivers on its off-peak window.

The trap is what happens across the wide weekday peak window. Peak hours (8 AM to 9 PM, Monday through Friday) hit approximately $0.30/kWh in distribution alone — add supply and you’re paying $0.455/kWh for every kilowatt-hour your household draws during those hours. That is roughly 50% higher than the R-1 flat rate, and it applies for 13 hours a day, five days a week. Only overnight sleeping hours and weekends are safely off-peak.

For an EV-only comparison, R-2 looks compelling: charging exclusively overnight at ~$0.20/kWh beats the standard R-1 flat rate of ~$0.30/kWh by $0.10/kWh. But National Grid customers don’t just charge EVs. The 13-hour weekday peak window covers school runs, remote work loads, mid-day laundry, cooking, air conditioning, and streaming — essentially every household activity that happens during waking hours. For a typical Massachusetts household with anyone home during the day, or with central AC running through July and August, the non-EV peak-hour usage frequently costs $200 to $400 per year more on R-2 than it would on R-1 — higher than the equivalent National Grid R-2 penalty because the R-2 peak window is 4 hours wider.

The households that make R-2 work: dual-income daytime commuters with an empty house 8 AM to 6 PM, second-home owners with low weekday occupancy, or aggressive schedule-shifters who genuinely do laundry, dishes, and cooking only after 9 PM. Everyone else pays the peak-window tax.

Path 2: ConnectedSolutions — the managed charging program

ConnectedSolutions takes a different structural approach. Your household electricity stays on National Grid’s standard R-1 flat rate — no time-of-use variation, no weekday-afternoon peak penalty on your AC or heat pump. Instead, National Grid pays you rewards specifically for allowing managed EV charging. The program is jointly run with National Grid and other Massachusetts utilities under a shared statewide framework, so the reward mechanics are essentially identical across territories.

The rewards come in two components. The primary reward is approximately $0.05/kWh cashback for every kWh of EV charging that National Grid manages — meaning the utility can throttle or delay your charging session during grid stress events. That effectively reduces your overnight EV charging cost from ~$0.30/kWh (R-1 flat) to ~$0.25/kWh. Still more expensive per-kWh than R-2’s ~$0.20/kWh off-peak, but the $0.05/kWh gap matters less than it looks once the fixed summer bonus enters the calculation.

The second reward is a summer enrollment bonus: approximately $25 per month for every summer month (June through September) that you remain enrolled and allow demand response events during 2 – 7 PM weekday windows. Add a $25 seasonal bonus and you’re looking at roughly $125 per year in fixed summer credits, on top of the per-kWh cashback.

The trade-off is real but manageable. National Grid may throttle your charging during peak grid stress — typically hot summer afternoons or cold winter evenings — meaning your car might charge more slowly than expected on those specific days. For most drivers who plug in when they get home and don’t need the car back on the road for 10+ hours, this is invisible. For rideshare drivers, delivery drivers, or households needing predictable fast recharge, the throttling can be inconvenient. Enrollment requires either a Level 2 charger from the approved-device list (the ChargePoint Home Flex is the most common) or a compatible EV with utility-integrated telematics.

The economics: which one wins?

The chart plots annual EV charging cost by mileage under both National Grid paths, assuming a compact EV (30 kWh/100mi) with all charging done overnight. The finding: there is a break-even mileage around ~8,300 mi/yr. Below that mileage, ConnectedSolutions wins on pure EV charging cost. Above it, R-2 TOU pulls ahead.

The break-even here (~8,300 mi/yr) is meaningfully lower than what we found in the Eversource analysis (~10,400 mi/yr). The reason: National Grid’s R-2 delivers a steeper off-peak discount than Eversource’s R-4 (~$0.20/kWh versus ~$0.225/kWh). The wider gap between R-2 off-peak and ConnectedSolutions effective rate means R-2’s per-kWh savings overtake the fixed $125/yr ConnectedSolutions bonus at lower annual mileage.

Above ~8,300 miles per year — the range that includes most commuters, most two-EV households, and any driver with a longer commute — the per-kWh savings under R-2 accumulate faster than the fixed reward. At 20,000 miles per year, R-2 saves approximately $175 over ConnectedSolutions on pure EV charging cost.

But the household exposure calculus is worse than Eversource’s. National Grid’s 13-hour weekday peak window is 4 hours wider than Eversource’s 9-hour window. That means more hours of household electricity exposed to the peak penalty, all else equal. For a household with central AC or an occupant home during the day, R-2 imposes an additional $200 to $400 per year in household costs — enough to fully offset R-2’s EV savings for most drivers under ~12,000 miles per year. On a whole-bill basis, R-2 only wins for very high-mileage EV owners whose household usage genuinely avoids the 8 AM to 9 PM weekday window.

Which path should you choose?

Choose ConnectedSolutions if: your annual EV mileage is below ~8,300 miles, if anyone is home during the day (retirees, remote workers, students, young children with a stay-at-home parent), or if your household has meaningful summer AC use or electric heat competing with the R-2 peak window. Given how wide the R-2 peak window is, ConnectedSolutions is the safer default for most National Grid customers — more households than not will find that peak-window exposure erodes R-2’s per-kWh EV savings. The utility takes the demand-response risk; you take the modest $125/yr rewards with no household TOU exposure.

Choose R-2 TOU if: your annual EV mileage is well above ~8,300 miles (two-EV households, long commutes, delivery/rideshare drivers), and your household usage genuinely avoids the 8 AM to 9 PM weekday window — dual-income daytime commuters with an empty house all day, weekend-only cooking and laundry routines, or a heat-pump household where the heating load runs mostly overnight rather than during peak evening hours. R-2 is a strong choice when you can guarantee both high EV mileage and disciplined household usage; it’s an expensive choice when either condition breaks.

Choose R-1 flat (neither program): if you drive under ~5,000 miles per year and don’t want to deal with enrollment complexity. The cost delta at that mileage is small enough that program overhead — approved-device requirements, throttling risk, TOU discipline — may not be worth the ~$40–80/yr saving.

The New England winter heating factor

Massachusetts is in the middle of a heat-pump transition. State-level MassSave incentives, federal Inflation Reduction Act credits (still active for heat pumps even after the EV credit expired), and rising natural gas prices have all combined to push residential customers off oil and gas heating and onto electric heat pumps at a meaningful pace. National Grid’s central and western Massachusetts service territory, which covers many older housing-stock communities still on oil heat, is where this transition is most active. That matters for the R-2 versus ConnectedSolutions calculation in a way that isn’t obvious.

Heat pumps run hardest when it’s coldest — typically overnight and in the early morning, which coincides partly with R-2’s off-peak window. A cold Massachusetts winter night can see a heat pump consuming 30–60 kWh in a 12-hour heating cycle. Under R-2, most of that overnight demand runs at ~$0.20/kWh instead of R-1’s ~$0.30/kWh — savings of $3.00 to $6.00 per cold night. Over a full New England heating season (roughly 120 heating days), that adds up to $360 to $720 in additional annual savings for heat-pump households on R-2.

But R-2’s wider peak window creates a wrinkle National Grid doesn’t have. Heat pumps also run hard on cold weekday mornings — waking up a house to 68°F from an overnight 62°F setback requires 6–12 kWh of aggressive heating between 6 AM and 9 AM. Under National Grid’s R-2, that morning ramp finishes before the noon peak begins. Under National Grid’s R-2, the 8 AM peak start catches the tail end of that heating ramp — typically 2–5 kWh of morning heating at peak rates, or ~$0.90 to $2.30 per cold morning at the peak-versus-off-peak spread. Over a heating season, that’s $108 to $276 in additional cost that partially offsets the overnight savings.

The net for heat-pump households on R-2: still favorable, but the winter savings are 20–35% smaller than they would be under National Grid’s R-2 because of the wider peak window. Households with an aggressive overnight setback strategy (letting temperatures drop to 58°F or lower overnight) will see more morning-ramp peak exposure. Households with a flat 68°F thermostat setting overnight will see less.

The practical guidance: if you have or plan to install a heat pump within your ownership horizon, model R-2 with both your overnight heating load and your morning ramp included. The winter economics are still positive, but the specific savings will be smaller than what National Grid customers see under R-2.

Where this analysis fits

The most useful peer comparison is the companion piece on the other side of Massachusetts: the Eversource Massachusetts analysis covers the same ConnectedSolutions program but a different whole-household TOU rate (R-4, with a narrower 9-hour peak window). Eversource’s break-even is at ~10,400 mi/yr versus National Grid’s ~8,300 mi/yr — a real difference driven by the specific rate structures each utility uses.

Outside Massachusetts, the Con Edison NY analysis follows a structurally identical pattern (whole-household Rate III vs SmartCharge NY behavioral cashback) with a very different conclusion, largely because Con Edison’s SmartCharge NY offers a much richer per-kWh cashback ($0.10/kWh vs ConnectedSolutions’ ~$0.05/kWh).

The PG&E EV2-A analysis and the SCE TOU-D-PRIME analysis both illustrate what happens when a utility offers a dedicated EV-only TOU rate rather than a whole-household TOU: the household exposure risk disappears and the math becomes much cleaner. National Grid does not currently offer a dedicated EV-only TOU rate — one reason R-2’s wide peak window requires the additional household usage analysis.

Massachusetts case studies are in development for the Drive Economics library and will illustrate these frameworks with specific vehicle and driver profiles.

Rate values reflect National Grid published tariff data as of September 2026 and are subject to change. R-2 TOU distribution rates ($0.072/kWh off-peak, $0.2786/kWh summer peak, $0.1711/kWh winter peak) reflect current published tariffs. Supply costs are variable, averaging $0.10 to $0.13/kWh in off-peak and winter months and $0.14 to $0.18/kWh during summer peak months; verify current supply rates at coned.com. Standard flat rate of $0.25 to $0.30/kWh total reflects typical all-in residential pricing. ConnectedSolutions program terms ($0.05/kWh cashback, $35 monthly summer bonus plus $25 seasonal bonus) reflect current published program terms; verify at fleetcarma.com or coned.com. Break-even mileage of approximately 3,300 miles per year assumes 30 kWh/100mi EV efficiency and a compact EV. Household TOU impact estimates assume typical Boston / Cambridge / Worcester summer air conditioning usage of approximately 240 kWh per month during peak hours across four summer months; actual household impact varies substantially with building type, AC efficiency, and behavior. Massachusetts gasoline price of $4.48/gallon reflects current statewide average as of September 2026. Case study specific numbers reflect the scenarios documented in the linked case study and may not directly translate to all National Grid EV owners.