New Delhi: Amending the norms, the government has now introduced the feature of prepaid collection of service charges at public EV charging stations. The Ministry of Power said on Monday that it has added a clause in the revised consolidated "Guidelines & Standards dated for Charging Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles" which says, "The public charging stations shall have the feature of prepaid collection of service charges with the time of the day rates and discount for solar hours."
The guidelines were first issued by the Centre on January 14 this year.
According to the revised guidelines, the government has also mandated the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) to periodically recommend a ceiling limit for service charges to state governments. "Under the heading 8. Service charges at PCS,' para 8.3 has been added as under: 8.3 A Committee under Central Electricity Authority (CEA) will periodically recommend to the State Government the ceiling limit of service charges to be levied under para 8.2 above," the Ministry of Power said.
This Committee will also be responsible for recommending the "time of the day rate" for service charges as well as the discount to be given for charging during solar hours. The authority responsible for fixing these charges in states is the state nodal agency.
The Time of Day (or TOD) tariff is a tariff structure in which different rates are applicable for use of electricity at different times of the day. Solar hours refer to daytime when sun is available and solar power generation is at its peak.
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