A CPO’s real job isn’t procurement. It’s capital allocation.
You’re deciding which sites to build, in what order, with whose hardware — and every decision has to survive a boardroom conversation about ROI. The charger invoice is the easy part. The hard part is knowing whether that charger will still be profitable in Year 5, Year 8, Year 10.
Most CPOs figure this out the hard way. They compare spec sheets. They negotiate on per-unit price. They build the site. Then they discover that a 2% efficiency gap, multiplied across 6 chargers and 8 years of peak-rate electricity, cost more than the hardware saving they fought for.
We built the Anari TCO Calculator so CPOs don’t have to learn this lesson on their own P&L.
1. What Your Spreadsheet Doesn’t Show You
A standard ROI model has three blind spots that compound over time:
Efficiency isn’t a spec — it’s an operating cost. Anari’s DC chargers run at 96% peak efficiency. Every percentage point below that is electricity you paid for that never reached a vehicle. At $0.15/kWh, across 6 chargers delivering 200 kWh/day each, a 3% gap is roughly $19,700 per year. Over 8 years: $158,000. You can buy a lot of chargers with $158,000.
Maintenance costs are designed in, not discovered later. Our semi-potting process seals key components against dust and moisture — the two things that kill power modules fastest in the field. Lower failure rates mean fewer truck rolls, fewer replacement parts, fewer hours of dead chargers bleeding revenue. Your spreadsheet probably has a flat 5% maintenance budget. The real difference between a charger built for field reliability and one built to a price point is a multiple of that.
Software lock-in is a TCO line item nobody prices. OCPP 1.6J means your chargers work with any compliant CSMS. Proprietary protocols mean you’re paying whatever your vendor’s platform charges — forever. The hardware saving on a locked-in charger disappears in Year 2 of inflated software fees.
2. The Calculator That Makes These Numbers Visible
We didn’t build a basic ROI widget. We built the tool we wish every CPO had before signing a purchase order.
Put in YOUR numbers: local electricity rates (flat or peak/off-peak), expected daily utilization, charger count, hardware cost, installation cost. The calculator models:
• IRR and NPV — so you can compare this site against other capital allocation options
• Payback period in months — not the optimistic version, the version with TOU rates and equipment replacement cycles built in
• Breakeven utilization — the single most important number for a new site: what utilization do you need for this to work?
• Cost per kWh delivered — because your end customers don’t pay you for charger efficiency, they pay per kWh
• 10-year cash flow — year by year, with power module replacements, fan replacements, and other mid-life costs included
3. Test Scenarios Before You Commit Capital
Change one variable and see the ripple effects in seconds:
• Utilization drops from 25% to 18% — does the site still break even?
• Peak electricity rates climb 20% — what’s the new payback?
• Compare two charger configurations side by side — what’s the 10-year cost difference between the cheaper unit and the more efficient one?
This is not a sales pitch dressed as a calculator. The defaults are conservative. It won’t make a marginal site look good. That’s the point.
4. Why This Matters for Your Next Purchase Decision
When you’re comparing Anari against another supplier, the per-unit price difference might be a few thousand dollars. The 10-year operating cost difference, driven by efficiency, reliability, and software freedom — that’s where the real money is.
The TCO Calculator exists because we want CPOs to make that comparison with real numbers, not spec-sheet intuition. Run your site through it. Compare Anari against anyone. If the numbers favor the cheaper unit, buy the cheaper unit. But if they don’t — now you have the data to back the decision.
5. Try It
The calculator is live on every Anari product page. No signup. No sales call. No ‘request a demo.’
Go to www.anariev.com, open any DC charger product page, and run your numbers.
Or send your site parameters to our team. We’ll build the full scenario analysis with you — including sensitivity testing for the variables that matter most in your market: grid stability, temperature derating, and local tariff structures.
The cheapest part of your entire project is the math you do before signing.