[dZired]

State-owned energy and power firm - NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation) has forayed into the electric vehicle charging system. The company has installed its first set of EV chargers at its offices in Delhi and Noida.

In addition to the company offices, the firm is planning to set up similar charging stations across various locations in Delhi NCR in the near future. NTPC is further looking ahead to introduce this venture in other cities as well, once demand for electric vehicle chargers increases.

NTPC is one of the major power suppliers of the country, with an installed power generation capacity of 51,410 MW. It amounts to 15% of the country's total power generation. In its attempt to switch to unconventional power resources, NTPC is targeting to generate 30% of its total power from non-fossil fuel based resources by the year 2032.

Source: ET Auto

Link to Team-BHP News

[vamsi.kona]

Good move. Hope this is the beginning of a major thrust towards building infrastructure in this field, with many other entering the foray. If at least 40% of the power comes from renewable sources that would be a good step.

[srishiva]

I would expect the local ESCOM companies to setup such points and have a smart card or similar device to authorize the charging.
NTPC will not own the distribution and they need to get power from escoms.

[agambhandari]

Fantastic move!! Didn't expect a state owned company to start rolling out such reforms for the EVs. With a decent network in a city like Delhi, I'm sure that​ the acceptance of EVs will increase. The majority of the trips in the city are very short duration and makes tremendous sense to use an EV.

I hope the manufacturers stop cribbing about the lack of infrastructure now and roll out some good cars to take advantage of this. The Delhi's polluted air needs it.

[DImPo]

Kudos to NTPC for taking this initiative. All private/public offices should emulate the same particularly the leading car companies. This would encourage more and more people to invest in e-vehicles which will help in reducing the cost of manufacturing such vehicles due to economies of scale.

There were news reports a couple of months earlier that NTPC or other PSUs could set up battery swapping stations ie., instead of charging your vehicle, you just swap the discharged battery bank of your vehicle with a pre-charged battery bank in any one of these stations for a fee.

[GTO]

Originally Posted by dZired

State-owned energy and power firm - NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation) has forayed into the electric vehicle charging system.

Kudos indeed!

Come to think of it, state-owned / public sector companies are in the best position to roll out EV chargers. They have easy access to the infrastructure & $$$. No privateer can do it so easily in India. If a company like B.E.S.T. takes up the initiative in Mumbai, corporate parks & housing complexes will follow.

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by GTO

Come to think of it, state-owned / public sector companies are in the best position to roll out EV chargers. They have easy access to the infrastructure & $$$. No privateer can do it so easily in India. If a company like B.E.S.T. takes up the initiative in Mumbai, corporate parks & housing complexes will follow.

No private company will do this because this is a bad, bad idea from shareholder returns point of view.

To begin with, there is a chicken and egg situation where we don't have enough EV cars and enough public charging points. One does not take off without the other. And there is no way a company like M&M will invest in charging points in a big way because charging technologies & techniques are still evolving. Like Dimpo says

Originally Posted by DImPo

There were news reports a couple of months earlier that NTPC or other PSUs could set up battery swapping stations ie., instead of charging your vehicle, you just swap the discharged battery bank of your vehicle with a pre-charged battery bank in any one of these stations for a fee.

Only fly in the ointment is packaging. There is only so much "room" inside a normal car. To allow quick changing of battery packs, you will have to make compromises (like boot space).

And then, there is this proprietary Tesla Supercharging technology that will charge a car in 30 mins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Supercharger

In 5 years, there might be a newer faster way of charging a car. So essentially, the Govt is using PSU's money to setup EV charging infrastructure in the country for "greater good".

[vamsi.kona]

Originally Posted by smartcat

In 5 years, there might be a newer faster way of charging a car. So essentially, the Govt is using PSU's money to setup EV charging infrastructure in the country for "greater good".

I believe there is a newer way, wireless charging, already in the making. Whether it is faster and feasible is another matter. But with time and technology I believe it will see the light soon.

Here is a small abstract of how it works

Inverters installed along the side of the road provide power to plates of copper embedded in the road. Similar copper plates are installed on the bus’s underside. As the vehicle passes over the charged roadway, the two fields interact and generate power.

Link to the article

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...tric-vehicles/

[GTO]

Originally Posted by vamsi.kona

I believe there is a newer way, wireless charging, already in the making.

Tech such as this, and ever-increasing EV ranges, could actually make owning an EV more convenient than a petrol car.

Tesla already has cars with a ~450 km range. Honestly, that is more than most people need for the week. Another couple of years, they'll hit 600 km. That's like Bombay-Goa on a single charge!

Then, wireless charging / home outlets / office charging means a quick charge without going out of the way....something you have to do for a petrol pump. EVs also have lesser moving parts than a conventional car, and thus lesser maintenance requirements.

[V.Narayan]

Every journey begins with the first step. This is one of those first steps. Mahindra's e20 is another and so on. There will be many skeptics in India and on our forum but it is many many small steps like this that change the face of an industry or the way we do things. 8 years ago when our apartment building was under construction I fitted two 15 amp points at my 2 parking spots in the building basement. One day they will be put to good use.

[ajmat]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Every journey begins with the first step. This is one of those first steps. Mahindra's e20 is another and so on. .

Interesting point. Yesterday I was looking at the e20 on display in my company. Suddenly the salesman says, "Hi Sir! How are you". i realised he was the sales person who sold me a Honda City Auto (for my cousin).

He quit slow selling Hondas to sell even slower selling e2O as he wants to understand more about the electric car landscape and customer profile.

[mpksuhas]

My issue with electrical vehicles is with the source of electricity which charges these vehicles.

Still coal powered thermal plants constitute majority of our electricity (59.2%) (source). If you combine other fossil fuels, generation percentage goes to 67.1.

So, if you were to drive an electric car for 100 KM's in India. Your fuel usage will be like below -
- Coal for 59 Km's
- Combination of other fossil fuels (Diesel, natural gas) for around 8 KM's
- Nuclear fuel for 2 KM's
- Renewable sources for remaining 30 odd KM's.


As you can see the major part of the electricity you are using is coming from highly polluting coal. On top of that combination of low quality coal available naturally and old thermal plants means our efficiency is really low

A quote from above link

India's thermal power plants emit 50% to 120% more CO2 per kWh produced when compared to the average emissions from their European Union (EU-27) counterparts.

On top of that, our per capita consumption is on an exponential increment. Especially in last decade it has doubled.

With significant part of country still not fully covered in the grid and even larger cities suffering from power outages coal will continue to remain a major source for our electricity for a while.

Renewable sources like wind & solar energy generation has picked up good and lets hope they constitute a bigger share to the grid soon.

Till then when you drive an electric car in India, you are for majority using energy from a highly polluting coal plant, which was transmitted to your home with a loss of around 25 % .


Also, NTPC is basically a coal based power generation firm. Though they have few gas based units too.

[sri_tesla]

Its good to see state owned companies like NTPC being proactive and investing in future technologies . NTPC mainly known for power generation through fossil fuels (coal and gas), is building solar power projects in huge scale. It already commissioned solar power plants with total capacity of 737MW. By this year end the capacity crosses 1000MW.

NTPC vision is to have 30% of their capacity from non fossil fuel based power plants like solar and wind. But I believe with rapid decline in prices of solar and wind projects, clean energy share will be much more than that 30%.

In the end electric vehicles, charging stations, clean energy from solar and wind plants means much cleaner environment for the people.

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by mpksuhas

My issue with electrical vehicles is with the source of electricity which charges these vehicles. Still coal powered thermal plants constitute majority of our electricity (59.2%)

Good point Suhas, but this is changing very fast. In the last quarter, 9600 MW came up online. This is the break-up -

Coal - 3161 MW
Nuclear - 1000 MW
Hydro - 1339 MW
Renewables - 4101 MW (solar & wind)

Basically, coal constituted just 33% of new power capacity added. The rest do not pollute the air to generate power.
Source: http://www.jsw.in/sites/default/file...esentation.pdf

Because of crash in prices of solar panels, generating solar energy is now cheaper than coal power
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/bus...y-2276707.html

[sri_tesla]

Originally Posted by smartcat

Good point Suhas, but this is changing very fast. In the last quarter, 9600 MW came up online. This is the break-up -

Coal - 3161 MW
Nuclear - 1000 MW
Hydro - 1339 MW
Renewables - 4101 MW (solar & wind)

Basically, coal constituted just 33% of new power capacity added. The rest do not pollute the air to generate power.

Not only renewable capacity is growing at a much faster rate, the usage of the already built coal power plants is declining rapidly in the last decade. PLF (plant load factor) is declining in the last few years at a rapid pace. Plant Load Factory (PLF) is the ratio between the actual energy. generated by the plant to the MAXIMUM possible energy that can be. generated with the plant working at its rated power and for a duration. of an entire year.



Even if coal generated power used in EV charging, EVs are still much cleaner than the petrol/diesel cars. Please see the below video which takes into account of all the things from manufacturing to usage of both EVs and ICE cars and calculates emissions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9m9WDxmSN8

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