Electric Car Charging Infrastructure And Guidelines Announced By Government

The Indian Government has finally announced a policy for the rollout of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. In an official document that was sent out by the Ministry Of Power on December 14, 2018, the government has outlined several key facts, figures and a plan to support the expansion of electric vehicles in the country. The push for electric mobility charging stations will first be rolled out in cities with a population of greater than 4 million residents i.e. Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Surat and Pune. The rollout means that after much waiting and uncertainty, India will finally have public electric charging stations as a reality rather than just a pipe dream. The Indian government has already recently announced additional benefits to electric car owners such as special green number plates. 

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(Electric Car Charging Infrastructure Plans Announced By Government)

The most important announcement in the circular is that the setting up of these charging stations will be a de-licensed activity and thus the rollout of these charging stations are expected to be quite rapid. The charging station will also be free to obtain electricity from any power company through the open access system. Once applied for, the charging station will also be given priority for an electric connection by the distributing agency. The circular has also stated that current fuel filling stations will be given priority and will be encouraged to set up these electric car charging stations. Company owned and company operated pumps will get even further priority over privately owned pumps. Fuel pumps will have to set up a 'firewall' in order to separate the electric charging infrastructure as compared to the conventional fuel one.

(CHAdeMO (above) and CSS (below) plug chargers will be mandatory)

While private charging stations in your house/apartment complex/office block is free to set up charging station for vehicles to be used internally, public charging stations will have to have a minimum requirement of charging infra that it will be required to meet. Every charging station will have to have a minimum of three fast chargers, one CCS - Combined Charging System style plug, one CHAdeMO - CHArge de MOve", equivalent to "move using charge" and one Type-2 AC fast charger. While the first two plus will have to have a minimum output of 50kW and 200-1000 volts, the Ty-2 plug will have to be a minimum of 22kW and have 380-480 volts. In addition, the charging station will also compulsorily have two slow/moderate charge points, one with a Bharat DC-001 connection with 15 kW and 72-22 volts and the other, a Bharat AC-001 with 10 kW and 230 volts.

(Electric cars in India get special Green number plates)

The government has also announced that in the cities mentioned above, there will be atleast one electric vehicle charging station in a grid of 3000 metres or 3 kms. On the highway, there will be an electric car station every 25 kms. The government has also recognised key corridors that will have electric charging stations for both smaller private vehicles and larger commercial vehicles. These include the expressways between Mumbai-Pune, Ahmedabad-Vadodra, Delhi-Agra (Yamuna Exp.), Surat-Mumbai, Agra-Lucknow, Delhi-Agra (NH2) and the Eastern Peripheral Expressway. Other major roads include the Hyderabad Outer Ring Road, Delhi-Jaipur highway, Bengaluru-Mysore highway and 5 connected highways to each megacity.

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