Urban India will soon have at least one EV charging station every 3 km
Power ministry targeting all cities with over 4 billion population under phase-1 for E-mobility coverage
New Delhi : The government is going full throttle in its efforts to realise the ambition of making India an electric vehicle hub by 2030.
In the first phase of Electric Vehicles (EV) rollout plan, the power ministry is targetting 4 billion-plus population cities under the EV policy initiative. It plans to cover all the state capitals, union territories, major highways and key cities under the second phase.
“In a grid of 3-by-3 kilometere (km), atleast one public charging station will be set up in urban areas. For the highways, atleast one fast charging station is planned for every 100 kms,” ministry’s joint secretary Vivek Kumar Dewangan said at an industry event here.
The Power ministry had in April last year announced that charging of electric vehicles is not a licensed activity and would be considered as a service. The de-licensing made sure that any entity can set up a public charging station in the country.
The ministry’s planning body Central Electricity Authority later laid down technical and safety norms for charging infrastructure of e-vehicles. Public charging standard norms and guidelines for EVs were notified in December 2018.
The ministry had revised the charging infrastructure guidelines for EVs last month based on the inputs received from stakeholders. The revised guidelines covered the issues of location for setting up public charging stations.
“In the next 10 days, we will be able to finalise the agencies for setting up EV charging infrastructure in the country, in response to the overwhelming expression of interest we received from various stakeholders and agencies,” said Dewangan, speaking at an international Workshop on “Policy framework to deploy Electric Vehicle charging infrastructure in India”.
He said that the ministry is committed to increase the share of renewable energy in the overall energy mix to 175 gigawatt (GW) by 2022 and the way forward is to achieve 450 GW of renewable power by 2030.
The official also informed that the plant load factor of renewable energy, particularly solar power plants is low and the balancing power for renewable energy has to come either through hydro or through thermal power plants. The ministry is trying to ensure thermal power plants meet the environmental emission norms.
Source : economictimes
