The power ministry has unveiled revised norms to support creation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, with an aim to enable a faster adoption of EVs in the country by ensuring safe, reliable ecosystem. The revised guidelines include allowing EV owners to charge them at their residence/offices using their existing electricity connections and de-licensing the setting up of EV charging infra.

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"The Union Ministry of Power has promulgated the revised consolidated Guidelines & Standards for Charging Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles (EV) on 14th January 2022," a power ministry statement said on Saturday. "The objective is to enable a faster adoption of electric vehicles in India by ensuring safe, reliable, accessible and affordable charging infrastructure and ecosystem," it added.

Infrastructure requirements for public charging infrastructure as well as for public charging infrastructure for long-range EVs and/or heavy-duty EVs have been outlined, it stated. Any individual/entity is free to set up public charging stations without the requirement of a licence provided that such stations meet the technical, safety as well as performance standards and protocols. An exhaustive list of compliance requirements for Public Charging Station (PCS) have also been outlined. These include norms for "appropriate" infrastructure for civil, electricity and safety requirements.

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The guidelines have been made further technology agnostic by providing for not only the prevailing international charging standards available in the market but also the new Indian charging standards. In order to address the challenge of making a charging station financially viable in the period of growth of EVs, a revenue sharing model has been put in place for land used for the same. Land available with the government/public entities shall be provided for installation of PCS to a government/public entity on a revenue sharing basis for installation of PCS at a fixed rate of Re 1/kWh (used for charging) to be paid to the land-owning agency from such PCS business payable on quarterly basis.

A model revenue sharing agreement has also been included under the guidelines. Such revenue sharing agreement may be initially entered by parties for a period of 10 years. The revenue sharing model may also be adopted by the public land-owning agency for providing the land to a private entity for installation of Public Charging Stations on bidding basis with floor price of Re 1/ kWh.

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The tariff applicable for domestic consumption shall be applicable for domestic charging. The revised norms provide that as electricity is being provided at concessional rates and also considering the fact that subsidy is being provided by the central/state governments in many cases for setting up public charging stations, the state government shall fix the ceiling of service charges to be charged by such charging stations. The new norms also provide that any public charging station/chain of charging stations may obtain electricity from any generation company through open access.

As per the initial estimates, a total of 3,263 chargers under BAU scenario, 23,524 chargers under moderate scenario and 46,397 under aggressive scenario are being targeted for installation of PCS in these cities by 2030. Public charging station will be required to tie up with at least one online Network Service Providers (NSPs) to enable advance remote/online booking of charging slots by EV owners.

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