The Indian Union Ministry of Power has brought two amendments to the revised and consolidated 'Guidelines and Standards for Charging Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles', issued earlier in January this year.
The first revision pertains to para 3.1 (xi) under the heading 3 'Public Charging Infrastructure (PCI) Requirements'. Accordingly, public charging stations shall have the feature of prepaid collection of service charges with the time of the day rates and discount for solar hours.
An addition to para 8.3 under the heading '8. Service charges at PCS' has also been notified, which says that a committee under Central Electricity Authority (CEA) will recommend to the state governments the ceiling limit of service charges to be levied at the EV charging stations.
Further, the addition also gives way for the committee to recommend 'time of the day rate' for service charges, along with the discount to be given, for charging during solar hours.
The latest revisions tend to address the issues raised by EV charging infra companies on states levying high service charges, which turns out to be a deterrent to establishment and expansion charging infrastructures and consumer adoption.
Lack of public charging stations is seen as a major challenge to EV adoption by users in India, especially in the passenger cars and light commercial vehicle segment. The latest guidelines on charging infrastructure aims to ease out the regulations and requirements for private players to establish large-scale public charging stations in the country.
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