The Power Ministry on Monday said it has revised the consolidated guidelines and standards for charging infrastructure for Electric Vehicles (EVs), which was issued in January this year.

Under the amended guidelines and standards, the Ministry has now mandated that all the public charging stations for EVs will have prepaid collection of service charges feature, with time of day rates, as well as discount for solar hours.

A committee will also be set up under the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) to recommend to the state governments the ceiling limit for service charges to be levied at these charging stations, the Power Ministry said.

“This committee shall also recommend ‘time of the day rate’ for service charges, as well as the discount to be given for charging during solar hours,” it added.

Under the revised consolidated guidelines and standards for charging infrastructure, which were issued on January 14, 2022, the tariff for supply of electricity for public charging stations (PCS) would be a single part tariff and would not exceed ‘Average Cost of Supply’ till March 31, 2025.

Besides, the land available with government/ public entities should be provided to government/ public entities on a revenue sharing basis at a fixed rate of Re 1 per kWh (used for charging), to be paid to the land-owning agency, initially for a period of 10 years.

Action plans have been prepared by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) and have been sent to the concerned state governments for eight cities with 4-million-plus population (Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Surat and Pune).

A discom can leverage on funding from the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS) under distribution infrastructure for general upstream network augmentation necessitated by the upcoming charging infrastructure in various areas. The cost of such works carried out by the discom with financial assistance from the Centre under RDSS shall not be charged from the consumers.

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