HIDCO batting for EVs in bid to go green
Kolkata: In a bid to minimise emissions and become eco-friendly, West Bengal Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) is encouraging the use of Electric Vehicles (EVs) in New Town-Rajarhat. The move is aimed at catering to the state’s Green City Mission, that stresses on harnessing of low carbon renewable energy and encouraging the use of green transport system. “The users of EVs suffer from ‘charging anxiety’, an anxiety that the battery will drain out and then the EV will stop. So we feel that it is necessary to have fast charging stations every few kilometres, so that there is always a place for charging the battery of an EV. Keeping this in mind, we, on behalf of New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA), are organising a design competition pertaining to intelligent e-vehicle fast charging stations,” a senior NKDA official said.
Any bona fide individual, firm or company is eligible to take part in the competition. They will have to come out with external design and internal technical design, which will be evaluated by an expert panel by NKDA. The winner would be given a prize of Rs 1 lakh.
“The designs should be such that at least four e-vehicles at a time can be charged from a single station,” the official added. It may be mentioned that as per the Solar City Master Plan for NKDA, the demand for energy is going to increase unabated in the business scenario. A reduction of 10 percent of the total energy demand has to be affected, achieving a total ratio of 65:35 between renewable resources and energy-efficient energy sources respectively, thus reducing the carbon footprint in the city.
NKDA has fixed February 7 for presentation of technical proposals before its expert committee. The results will be declared on February 12. “The normal charging options for scooties or totos as well as fast charging option should be there. The fast charging should ideally take 2 hours,” the official said. It may be mentioned that New Town already has bike taxis, e-rickshaws and eco carts (golf carts). HIDCO also has an EV of a noted vehicle manufacturing company, which is used often. “We are thinking of having shared GPS controlled EVs, similar to that of the recent dockless GPS controlled public cycle sharing scheme,” NKDA chairman Debashis Sen said.
Source: millenniumpost.in
