RT Koytango Private Limited, a part of Hriman Motors LLP, is setting up free electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in New Delhi, connected to grid tied rooftop solar power projects. It has secured numerous green funds for this objective, the company announced today.

The solar charging stations will offer 100 percent free EV charging to every vehicle in the national capital.

To set up the rooftop solar plant with the charging station, any business, school, college, office, factory with a minimum of 100 kW load and 10,000 square-feet rooftop space will be eligible. This entire set up will be free of cost. Charging for all electric vehicles will also be free for three years.

“Even if we assume 80 percent of EV will charge at night at home, 20 percent will need the top-up charging when out on the road. Average charging time for per vehicle will be approximately 2 hours. Therefore, we need to make sure that charging stations come to the vehicle rather than vehicle going to the charging station”, said Rushen Chahal, one of the founders of RT Koytango in a press release.

The program is also available for commercial buildings. This initiative will help reduce electricity bills by 20 percent and offer EV charging to building staff and employees.

Two other RT Koytango Private founders,  Mrinalini Kapoor and Raninder K Chahal, commented, “It is a known fact that day time usage in Delhi is over 6 GWs and this can be compensated to a great extent using solar. What remains to be understood is that the local Delhi grid will not be able to take the additional load of charging 0.2-0.5 million electric vehicles. Hence power, or rather green power, needs to be generated exactly where the charging is happening.”

Currently, Delhi has over 400 square kms of rooftop space available and solar penetration is under 1 percent. Even if 25 percent of the space is utilized, 3 to 4 GW of power can be generated.

Delhi will soon have the world’s second largest fleet of electric buses after China. In its budget for the financial year (FY) for 2018-19, the Delhi government had announced that 1,000 electric buses will soon be introduced in the national capital.

Increasingly, more states are preparing for a wider penetration of EVs as an intelligent and sustainable mode of communication. In a recent report, Mercom highlighted India’s potential EV hot spots.

Recently, the Ministry of Power has issued a clarification stating that no license is required to operate electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in India. This is a positive news for the sector and is expected to boost the participation of more private players in the creation of EV charging station infrastructure across the country.

In a bid to propel the growth of EVs in the country, the government also announced a slash in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rate on lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries.

Image credit: By Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz) [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons