Why in news?
The government has recently drawn up a draft set of guidelines for constructing appropriate infrastructure to support a fleet of electric vehicles (EVs) nationwide.
What are the guidelines?
- The guidelines focus on the requirements for setting up public charging stations for EVs as well as the ability to charge cars and scooters at home.
- Public charging station could be established without a special licence, thus ensuring that the government don’t have control over new enterprises.
- Furthermore, there will be no restrictions on the owners of EVs charging them at home.
- Such charging will be carried out at the same tariff at which other household appliances are charged.
- Meanwhile, the cost of charging at a public station will be determined by the electricity regulator for the state.
- However, it cannot be more than 15% higher than the average cost of supply.
- This would ensure that states do not see electric vehicle charging as a source of cross-subsidy for other electricity users.
- Anyone setting up a power-charging station will have to be connected as a priority by the local power distribution companies.
- Accordingly, the power-charging station will be afforded open access to the power grid.
- Subsequently, a power-charging station can be able to contract to buy power from the generation firm it regards the cheapest and most reliable.
What should be done?
- The government should ensure that after setting up the safety standards for the power charging stations, other requirements are left up to the market.
- Apart from focussing on charging stations, the government needs to push carmakers to better design and market electric vehicles.
- States, on their part, will have to take up this matter on priority and assign land to power-charging stations, since the process is quite land-intensive.
- The government has set the target of at least 30% of electric vehicles on the road by 2030.
- With the guidelines in hand, the government can try to implement it in the Union territories as pilot projects and then scale it at an all-India level.
Source: The Hindu
