Covers AC-DC conversion and battery management overhead — typically 10-15%.
Cost of this charge
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How the math works
The battery only needs the "energy to add" figure, but the wall meter sees more than that: charging always loses some energy as heat during AC-to-DC conversion and while the battery management system balances cells, so the grid draw is always higher than the kWh that actually lands in the pack.
Charging losses typically run 10-15% for home and public Level 2 (AC) charging, and can run higher on DC fast charging, where the station itself does the AC/DC conversion and the pack's thermal management works harder to handle the higher current.