EV Infrastructure: Uttar Pradesh Starts First With EOI

Uttar Pradesh Wants More

The Uttar Pradesh government has become the first off the blocks when it comes to establishing an enabling infrastructure for electric vehicles. The state agency has invited expressions of interest(EoIs) from companies to set up charging stations in the state, soon after the central power ministry issued its guidelines for such facilities in December last year. The guidelines were meant to start the process of infrastructure creation to enable pubic transport at first to start the transition to electric vehicles.
With a focus on accessible, quality and safe stations to recharge, the new policy is seemingly quite simple.

Eight cities, including Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Agra, Noida, Prayagraj, Ghaziabad and Meerut have been identified for the first roll out. The showcase Agra-Lucknow Expressway, the Delhi-Agra Expressway and the Eastern Peripheral Expressway, as well as the proposed Purvanchal Expressway from Lucknow to Ballia that’s under construction currently have also been marked out for charging stations.
Electricity distribution firms will be the agencies for establishing stations at home and offices, according to the documents.

Like neighbouring Delhi’s proposed policy  before it, Uttar Pradesh proposes not to have any licensing requirements for setting up charging stations, in a bid to make adoption faster and create employment too, in the form of entrepreneurs who set up single or chains of power stations. Of course,  with the state’s poor record on actual implementation, as seen in the mess that its rooftop solar policy has created, industry experts believe that most players would take a wait and see attitude. An earlier plan by Essel infrastructure to  invest in massive infrastructure creation for EV’s is already junked, thanks to the financial travails of that firm. The notorious state bureaucracy is another hurdle that few outside the state like to take on , and it remains to be seen how this EOI performs.

Delhi currently remains the only state in the region with a functional public charging infrastructure (PSC’s)to show, though, to call it a network yet would be a misnomer.