In a bid to encourage more companies to opt for setting up public charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs), the government is planning to restructure the subsidy mechanism under the FAME scheme to offer incentives for setting up upstream infrastructure for such stations.

Besides, plans are also afoot to create a national level benchmark for user charges, charge paid by an EV customer for battery charging, Power Secretary Alok Kumar said on Thursday at the INSIGHT 2022 conference.

“We have internally reviewed the subsidy structure for charging stations. The biggest barrier apart from land cost is the cost of upstream infrastructure. It is almost as expensive as, or more expensive, than the cost of chargers, and other equipment. So we are very soon going to restructure the FAME subsidy part for charging stations. We had a discussion with NHAI, and other forums. There is a consensus that we need to support the initial few thousands of charging stations through subsidy for upstream infrastructure. We believe it will go a long way in rolling out charging stations,” Kumar said.

According to Power Ministry guidelines, there shall be at least one charging station every 25 km on both sides of the highway and also at least one charging station for long range/ heavy duty EVs at every 100 km on both sides of the highway. For the city at least one charging station will be set up in a grid of 3km x 3km.

Charging infra

At present, the second phase of Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India (FAME) is being implemented for 5 years from April 1, 2019 with ₹10,000 crore budgetary support.

Kumar explained, “This is in discussion stages. There is no subsidy under FAME on upstream infrastructure like transformer, transmission lines, etc, which is charged by the Discom. Charging stations have a load of around 150-200 KV for which a new transformer has to be installed. The cost of which is around ₹5-6 lakh. There is no subsidy in this.”

The Secretary said that they are working on providing subsidies to entities who are setting up charging infrastructure so that they can pay the Discoms. This will be part of FAME. Here the preference will be in a more concerted manner. “We will provide for setting up infra in petrol pumps on highways and in small cities for public bus depots,” he added.

“Initially, we are targeting nine cities, with a population of over 4 million, and the connecting expressways and highways. The proposal is to saturate the expressways and highways with about 20,000 charging stations. We will take the help of oil marketing companies (OMCs) for this. Most of the FAME subsidy for charging infrastructure will be channelised to these expressways and highways,” Kumar said.

FAME II

FAME II focuses on supporting electrification of public and shared transportation and aims to support through subsidies for 7,090 e-buses, 5 lakh e-3 wheelers, 55,000 e-4 wheeler passenger cars and 10 lakh e- 2 wheelers. Creation of charging infrastructure is also supported to address range anxiety among EV users.

Under Phase-II, around 4.7 lakhs EVs have been supported till May 15, 2022 by way of demand incentive. Besides, the Ministry of Heavy Industries has sanctioned 6,315 e-buses for 65 cities/STUs/CTUs/State government entities for intracity and intercity operations across 26 States/UTs. It has sanctioned 2,877 EV charging stations in 68 cities across 25 States/UTs. Further, 1,576 charging stations across 9 expressways and 16 highways have also been sanctioned.

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