CESL to set up 810 EV charging stations across 16 highways, expressways

NEW DELHI: Convergence Energy Services Limited (CESL), a subsidiary of Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) under the power ministry, has discovered prices for setting up 810 electric vehicle charging stations across 16 expressways and national highways covering 10,275 km. 

The charging stations are expected to be set up in the next six-eight months. The selected corridors include busy routes such as the Mumbai-Pune Highway, Ahmedabad-Vadodara Highway, Delhi-Agra Yamuna Expressway, Eastern Peripheral Expressway, Hyderabad ORR Expressway, and Agra-Nagpur Highway.

As an industry first, CESL is using a service procurement model to set up these charging stations involving the private sector in building India’s electric mobility ecosystem.

In this public-private-partnership (PPP) model, CESL will partner with companies to invest in and operate these charging stations across the expressways and highways.

The charging infrastructure on highways is part of the FAME-II scheme administered by the Ministry of Heavy Industries to promote and establish a network of e-highways across the country. The EV charging stations will be designed to cater to both private and public vehicles including ones on the roads such as Hyundai Kona, Tata Nexon EV, MG ZS EV & other compatible EVs and e-buses.

Providing fast DC connectors, CESL will install 590 chargers of 50kW capacity that will be available every 25 kilometres and 220 chargers of higher 100kW capacity, every 100 km.

Customers will be able to access the charging stations through a mobile app which will provide information about nearby charging points, their availability, charger type, ability to schedule reservations/charge without reservations, charging tariff, and other types of information usually wanted by commuters. Customers can charge their EV in approximately 40-50 minutes depending on the battery capacity of the vehicles.

“CESL is working to enable the participation of private enterprise and markets in building India’s electric mobility ecosystem. The use of Government subsidies such as in FAME II allow such a leverage to be achieved. I am thankful to for leadership of the Ministry of Heavy Industries and the Ministry of Power for framing suitable policies that set the foundation for us to design these business models. I hope we will be able to see all our roads with charging stations soon,” said CESL managing director and CEO Mahua Acharya.

The feasibility of the park and charge facility for customers across all EV segments will also be explored as part of this initiative. “The idea of establishing these charging stations is to reduce the electric vehicle range anxiety amongst consumers and encourage them to choose EVs for long haul transport as well,” Acharya added.