BENGALURU: The Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM) started an electric vehicle fast charging point amidst much fanfare earlier in February this year. The charging point, located in its corporate office campus in KR Circle, was to be joined by 11 more charging points within BESCOM premises across the city. However, with literally no takers for this facility and low awareness among electric vehicle users, the distribution utility is now looking to change tack and target public parking spaces and Namma Metro stations across the city to set up points.
Helped by a grant of Rs 25 crore from Union government schemes, the BESCOM is now looking to install these fast charging points at 83 locations across the city including the 11 locations it had planned for before. According to officials, these points will come up at a distance of 3 kilometres from each other. “We are looking to install these points at BBMP parking lots, Metro stations and other public spaces where vehicles can park and recharge their batteries,” Rajendra Cholan P, Managing Director, BESCOM said. Asked about the earlier plan of providing charging points within BESCOM offices, Cholan said that the move had not seen much traction as no vehicle owner had used the facilities till now at the corporate office. “But we are using it for our own fleet of electric vehicles,” he said.
In addition to the BESCOM effort to install 83 charging points, the Transport Department is also hoping that Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy, in his budget presentation, will give the green signal to install 100 charging points that has been proposed by the department. Namma Metro is also set to launch charging points on its own at a few important stations including Jayanagar, MG Road and two more stations in Phase I. These will be deployed within the next two weeks, officials said.
While all of these are efforts by government agencies to boost electric vehicle adoption, private players are also expanding their network across the city. Ather Energy, an electric vehicle manufacturing company, has managed to commission between 20-25 charging points across the city till June this year and has plans to create its own grid covering most of Bengaluru.
The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) had recently announced that those looking to set up charging points did not have to take a licence from the KERC. The Ministry of Power also recently clarified that electric vehicle charging points could not be viewed as resale of electricity by the company owning the point paving the way for individual agencies, both private and government-owned, to set up charging points of their own.