NEW DELHI: While the national capital now boasts of three ‘electric bus depots’ that house the 152 electric buses in the Delhi Transport Corporation’s (DTC) fleet with 150 more on the way, depots and terminals of DTC will very soon extend electric vehicle charging facilities to the public too.
At seven locations, where DTC has depots, terminals, and one workshop, public charging stations are nearing completion. Each of these charging stations will have a total of six charging points – three for cars and three for two and three-wheelers.
“Delhi is ready to offer EV charging facilities to its citizens at 7 bus depots across the city. Today, I inspected the work at EV charging station being developed at Rajghat depot. Happy to see the progress; it will go live soon,” state transport minister Kailash Gahlot tweeted on Friday.
Gahlot also inspected the Rajghat electric bus depot, which will be the third after the depots at Rohini and Mundela Kalan to house the new 100% electric buses of Delhi’s public transport fleet.
Gahlot had laid the foundation stone for the city’s first public EV charging plaza at DTC’s Nehru Place bus terminal in September last year. The other six locations are bus depots at Dwarka’s Sector-8 and Sector-2, Sukhdev Vihar depot, Kalkaji depot, Mehrauli bus terminal, and the Okhla Central Workshop-II.
CESL, a wholly owned subsidiary of Energy Efficiency Services Limited, ministry of power, is developing these public EV charging stations and battery swapping stations at these terminals and depots in collaboration with DTC. Once commissioned, these locations will also be available on Delhi government’s ‘One Delhi’ mobile application.
As part of the memorandum of understanding, CESL will maintain these charging stations at its own cost. The charges for usage of location will be paid by CESL to DTC on a monthly basis at the rate of Rs 1 per kWh of energy dispensed. Initially, the contract period is of 10 years.
There are also plans to integrate solar rooftop and the battery storage system with the installation of charging infrastructure wherever feasible, to use renewable energy to power the charging stations.
The government plans to add 20 more sites of the transport department in the next phase of installation, apart from 100 public charging stations. The government believes that the availability of charging infrastructure will significantly ease the transition towards e-mobility for public transport and subsequently for the residents of Delhi.
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