Public EV charging stations to have prepaid collection of service charges: Govt

The Ministry of Power has issued an amendment in the revised consolidated Guidelines & Standards dated 14 January, 2022, for charging infrastructure for electric vehicles (EV). As per the revision announced, all public EV charging stations in the country will need to have the feature of prepaid collection of service charges with the time of the day rates and discount for solar hours.

The state governments will be given recommendations on the ceiling limit of service charges to be levied on these EV stations by a committee under Central Electricity Authority (CEA). The committee will also recommend ‘time of the day rate’ for service charges and the discount to be given for charging during solar hours.

As India tries to accelerate adoption to electric vehicles, various states, institutions and automakers are working on installing EV charging stations so as to make it convenient for people to own EVs. Last month, the Delhi government announced that it has set up 1,000 charging stations in less than a year under its single window facility. The city government is planning to set up 18,000 such points in the next three years. The single window facility for EV chargers was introduced in November of 2021.

The West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (WBSEDCL) has also welcomed interest in setting up electric vehicle charging infrastructure in public-private partnership (PPP) to push electric mobility in the state. Official sources shared that the state-run organisation has invited bids from operators to build 205 charging or batter-swapping stations.

Automakers such as Mahindra, MG Motor, Tata Motors, Ather Energy, among others have also been working towards setting up EV charging stations across states and highways. Late last month, Mahindra entered into a partnership with Charge+Zone, an electric vehicle charging company, in order for its upcoming EVs to have access to around 2,5000 charging points of the latter.