[yashg]

Our housing society in Mumbai is seriously thinking about going the EV way and are keen on setting up few common charging points around the building so each individual member doesn't have to install their own charging points. Does anyone here know of any vendors/companies that help societies set up community chargers? Does anyone have have any contacts/references with any such companies or know of societies that may have set up common chargers? We are looking to set up 3 phase AC fast chargers which look like the most cost effective solution as per my preliminary research.

Even though all members have fixed allotted parking, it is controlled by the builder and there is no way members are going to be able to pull a cable to their individual parking lots hence common chargers are only solution. Society is serious enough that it may be taken up in the upcoming AGM and a resolution may be passed and initial outgo approved.

What we will have to figure out is how to charge EV owners for the electricity. Ideal solution would be to do what most commercial charging solutions are doing - you top-up their wallet and pay for what you use. That is why a vendor or company that can provide an end to end solution including installing chargers to handling usage monitoring and billing would be a preferred option. I am going to reach out to Zeon and few others that I can find to see if they can help.

If we can't find a solution provider then we may have to buy and install chargers ourselves and society may charge a lump sum amount to EV owners per month. This will require a larger initial investment by the society which it will then have to somehow recover from EV owners over a period.

If anyone here has any leads or any experience in setting up common chargers in their society/apartment complex, please do share your experience and any contacts.

[speedmiester]

Originally Posted by yashg

If anyone here has any leads or any experience in setting up common chargers in their society/apartment complex, please do share your experience and any contacts.

Excellent move, hope more housing society take up facilitating EV charging seriously.

As per my knowledge, Zeon and others offer AC charging facilities to individuals and organisations. These are 7.4W AC chargers, similar to ones provided by Hyundai and MG for their EV cars. The cost is around 65K+ taxes and installation.

Since I have booked the MG ZS EV, an electrician from MG visited my apartment and suggested the following.
Apartment complexes have 3 phase power and close to 40-50KW power systems installed. All one needs to do is draw a submeter and install the AC chargers at dedicated points. This will help monitor usage and charge the EV users accordingly. Drawing an extra line and installing a submeter should cost around 10K. This needs a NOC from the association and need approval from the respective DISCOMs.
The other alternative is to draw a line from individual meter which require upgrading the power requirements and installing a charger at the parking slot. This will cost more and also takes a longer time for approvals.

[libranof1987]

Our society has been seriously contemplating installing charging points as well and is considering three possibilities:

1) Have designated charging stations:
Pro:
- Minimal wiring as the most common/convenient spot can be chosen
- Most efficient when it comes to billing, as a subscription model can be implemented

Con:
- The overhead of managing this will be on the society, and owner-managed Society Office/Committee will not have the bandwidth, given the already heavy workload
- While there are very few EVs now, the numbers will grow soon. Naturally, the no. of charging stations << EVs in no time. When that happens, how do you deal with managing the queue. FIFO won't work efficiently as everyone might have different schedules and it won't be fair on most

2) Have chargers at individual parking lots, with electricity pulled from the society wiring:
Pro:
- Convenient for owners

3) Have chargers at individual parking lots, with electricity pulled from their respective meters:
Pro:
- Most convenient and straightforward for both society and owners

Con: a big one
- Wire routing will be a tremendous mess, and expensive. Our society has the meter boxes on stilt, and parking on stilt and basement. Routing the wires across the parking lots on overheard channels will be messy, and cost quite a bit

This issue is tabled for discussion during the AGM, but it seems unlikely that there'll be a consensus soon. For now, the handful of owners are getting charging points installed in their parking lot.

[GTO]

The home EV charging thread (Setting up an Electric Vehicle charging point at home) has a wealth of information. Be sure to read that.

[yashg]

Originally Posted by speedmiester

As per my knowledge, Zeon and others offer AC charging facilities to individuals and organisations. These are 7.4W AC chargers, similar to ones provided by Hyundai and MG for their EV cars. The cost is around 65K+ taxes and installation.

Spoke with Zeon today. They have the 22 kW ABB chargers for 76K. They provide end to end solution along RFID for individual usage tracking. Had also shared the requirement on IndiaMart, got calls from couple of other vendors as well. They all provide a complete solution.

Originally Posted by libranof1987

Have chargers at individual parking lots, with electricity pulled from their respective meters:
...
Con: a big one
- Wire routing will be a tremendous mess, and expensive.

Precisely. If everyone starts pulling wires to their parking lots from their meters, it will be a mess as well as a safety hazard. The first instinct of our society chairman was no, everyone can't be allowed to pull their own wires.

Originally Posted by GTO

The home EV charging thread (Setting up an Electric Vehicle charging point at home) has a wealth of information. Be sure to read that.

Thanks GTO, will check it out.

3 phase fast AC charger seems like an ideal solution for societies. DC chargers are very expensive (Costs anywhere from 10-20 lakhs and requires separate lines, permissions from DISCOMs and a lot of additional hardware).

One vendor mentioned to me that it is better to get a separate line/meter from EV chargers because it has subsidized rates.

Will update this thread as I get more information and prices from vendors.

[deep_bang]

One more thing to consider is the per unit cost of installed by a 3rd party versus if installed through a seperate line pulled from the same meter.
As far as I know the cost per unit charges by the 3rd party chargers is quite high and subscribers may still ask the question of why should I not pull a line from my own meter.

Rather i think you should explore the possibility of drawing a single common line and then have meters for each parking slot and let those meters be in the name of the owners and not the society. Parking overnight does not need very high charging current like 10/20kw stuff. You can make do with a more common 5/7kw capacity (or even lesser actually) as most people park overnight and don't need high charging current. This will work out more economical and also move the maintainance to the discom rather than the society. It will also enable each owner to get a capacity that they desire and thus future proof as owners can upgrade their meters when technology improves and needs are different.

[pradeepkc]

Reach out to Ather, ElectricPe, Bolt or such companies for common Charger installation. They may also have a 7.2kW AC Charger for cars. There are a lot of charger companies that offer smart 16A 3.3kW socket outlets that are available on Amazon as well. Most of them provide an app to scan a barcode and pay for the charging.

[Comrade]

Originally Posted by yashg

Spoke with Zeon today. They have the 22 kW ABB chargers for 76K. They provide end to end solution along RFID for individual usage tracking. Had also shared the requirement on IndiaMart, got calls from couple of other vendors as well. They all provide a complete solution.

Yash, just some pointers based on my experience of using a "private" Chargepoint network in the US.

1. Try to negotiate a deal where fixed costs (Hardware AMS, Software subscription costs etc.) and customer billing (discom charges per kwh) are seperate. Fixed costs can come from society's common maintenance fund instead of bundling into customer billing. This should save money for your society when EV adoption/usage goes up.

2. Ensure that vendor is not billing (either prepaid or postpaid) individual residents more than what discom rates are, as fixed costs have been seperately addressed.

3. Try to ensure that residents are billed for energy (kwh) consumed instead of occupancy per minute/hour.

4. Ensure that these few chargers within the soceity can be marked "private" in vendor's software, and don't show up on their public network. eg: anyone who has ZEON app/RFID/subscription for public highway chargers should not get access to these chargers. If a guest with an EV is visiting any resident and needs a quick top-up, the resident can pay with their society-enabled RFID. Also, there needs to be an admin who can enable or disable residents' access to the network.

Please keep us posted on how the implementation goes.

[yashg]

I have received quotations from 6 vendors so far. Some are distributors of charger manufacturers, some manufacture their own chargers.

They all provide the chargers, help with installation (at extra cost) and provide a billing solution (at extra cost). Society can set the per unit rate to charge the members. In case of public network providers like Zeon, you can set your chargers private so they won't who up on their pblic network. Since money will be collected by the vendor, their transfer it to society after deducting payment gateway/processing charges. Meters will be owned by the society and society will pay the electricity bills. Member usage monitoring is done either via an RFID tag or app.

Most vendors are providing 7.4 kW AC chargers.

International chargers typically have 2 years warranty, Indian ones have 1 year.

Vendor – Zeon, Tirupur, Tamilnadu
http://zeoncharging.com/home-charging
Charger – ABB Terra Wallbox

ABB – 7.4KW Terra AC wall box EV Charger (Single Phase) – 65,100 (Incl 5% GST)
ABB – 22KW Terra AC wall box EV Charger (Three Phase) – 75,600 (Incl 5% GST)

Vendor - Shreyas Enterprises, Navi Mumbai
http://www.shreyasenterprises.in
Chargers – Axonify, EO

Bharat AC 001 3.3 X 3 kW – 69,632
Axonify HYBRID-AC Fast charger 7.4 kW – 73,143
Axonify ATOM 211 AC Single Phase 7.4 kW - 57,834
Axonify ATOM 212 AC Duel Gun Public use Charger – 78,133
Axonify ATOM 231 AC Three Phase Single Gun 22 kW - 80,514
Payment Gateway + Server subscription + Mobile app – 4,248

EO Genius up to 7.4 kW/32amps 3 phase – 1,27,000
EO Genius up to 22kW/32amps 3 phase – 1,46,000
EO Mini up to 7.2kW/32amps-RE – 63,300
EO HUB (required for Genius) – 84,800
Hub required in addition to charger

Vendor - RIOD Logic Private Limited, Kochi, Kerala
https://riod.in
Charger – RIOD

RIOD POWERPOD 7.2kW – 45,000

Vendor - Vraj Technologies, Mumbai, Ahmedabad
http://www.vrajev.com
Charger – Delta

Delta 7.4 KW AC - 65,000 + 5% GST + Installation 4,500 + 18% GST = 73,560
Delta 25KW DC - 630,000 + 5% GST + Installation 12,500 + 18% GST = 6,76,250
Mobile Application charges: 10% of Transaction value or Rs. 350 per charger per month

Delta charger is also provided by Tata and MG along with the cars.

Vendor - Caravan Marketing Pvt Ltd, Kolkata
Charger – ABB Terra Wallbox

ABB – 7.4KW Terra AC wall box EV Charger (Single Phase) – 62,000 + 5% GST
ABB – 22KW Terra AC wall box EV Charger (Three Phase) – 78,500 + 5% GST

Vendor - Intellicon Technologies, IIT Delhi startup
https://www.intellicon.in/
Charger – Intellicon

Ac hybrid charger (Can charge 3 vehicles simultaneously) - 61,500 + 5% GST
15 KW AC Type 2 with dual gun – 85,000 + 5% GST


Out of all these, I would prefer to go with Zeon+ABB or Vraj+Delta. Zeon with ABB chargers has a proven track record and a reliable network. Delta is an OEM for Tata and MG. Many other companies have plethora of other businesses and they are just distributing the chargers as one more line of business.

Originally Posted by deep_bang

As far as I know the cost per unit charges by the 3rd party chargers is quite high and subscribers may still ask the question of why should I not pull a line from my own meter.

Rather i think you should explore the possibility of drawing a single common line and then have meters for each parking slot and let those meters be in the name of the owners and not the society.

Drawing lines to members' individual parking lots is not possible in our society. Builder won't allow it. Neither builder nor society are in favour of individual chargers.

Originally Posted by Comrade

1. Try to negotiate a deal where fixed costs and customer billing are seperate.

2. Ensure that vendor is not billing (either prepaid or postpaid) individual residents more than what discom rates are

3. Try to ensure that residents are billed for energy (kwh) consumed

4. Ensure that these few chargers within the soceity can be marked "private" in vendor's software

Yes all the vendors are quoting fixed and billing software separately. Society can set the rate that the members will be charged. Society will have to charge a little extra than what the discom is charging to cover some of the fixed costs and payment processing charges. Residents will be charged for energy only and except Zeon all others are private solutions and Zeon has option to mark the chargers private.

[rsidd]

One issue is that routine fast-charging is not recommended by some manufacturers. (Though some research says this is exaggerated.) To preserve battery life the EV manufacturers recommend slow charging most of the time, fast charging only when on a highway or in emergencies. The association should find a way to enable charging infrastructure in individual parking slots. Within a year or two this will become quite commonplace.

[yashg]

Originally Posted by rsidd

One issue is that routine fast-charging is not recommended by some manufacturers. (Though some research says this is exaggerated.) To preserve battery life the EV manufacturers recommend slow charging most of the time,

These are not super fast DC chargers that juice up the car in an hour, but 7.4 kW AC chargers which also takes around 8 hours to charge the car from 0-100. The super slow 15Amp will take 15 hours. Even if members have their own chargers in their parking lots that is just too long. Manufacturers themselves provide these 7.4 kW fast AC chargers and an EV owner will use them most of the time to charge.

[libranof1987]

Originally Posted by yashg

I have received quotations from 6 vendors so far.

Thanks for sharing - very helpful! Given that we are a four-building society with stilt and basement parking, it looks likely that we will go for individual charging stations - owners to get wiring done and chargers installed at their cost, in their spot.

Some questions:
1) Are these chargers compatible for for 2W and 4W; or just 4W? The cost for just 2W will be lower?

The likelihood and scale of 2W EVs is much larger than that of 4W.

2) What is a ballpark wiring cost - this seems to be the considerable

[prasanna_indaje]

You can also consider Bolt (or similar ones) as your starting point. These are inexpensive and gives an option to charge back to the users. More details here

Points to note :

• This is a 16A socket with charge back options
• Ideal for 2Ws and can be used for 4Ws too
• Users need to use the charger provided with their respective vehicles.
• Wiring is simple.

Disclaimer : In no way associated with this company. Just suggesting.

[yashg]

Originally Posted by libranof1987

1) Are these chargers compatible for for 2W and 4W; or just 4W? The cost for just 2W will be lower?
2) What is a ballpark wiring cost - this seems to be the considerable

Some of the chargers are Hybrid. They have one 7.4 kW type-2 gun and another industrial socket which can be used by cars or bikes. The IIT Delhi startup charger has gun+2 industrial sockets so you can charge 3 vehicles at once.

One vendor has shared the cost of cable and cable laying.
Power Cable CU 6sqmm 3 Core - 245/meter
Cable Laying on site - 30/meter

So if you install the charger 50 meters away from the meter box, it will cost you 13750. But 6 sqmm seems inadequate to me.

GTO had earlier shared about the cables to be used for EV chargers

Originally Posted by GTO

Faster Charging
- Cable used is 10 sq mm three-core if the distance is under 30 meters.
- 16 sq mm (armored cable) if distance is over 30 meters from meter.
- Install 4 inch PVC conduit and keep handholes at every 5m.

So cost will actually be significantly more. It is possible the cost of cables exceeds cost of charger itself.

[Rossiter]

My apartment building of 350 flats has opted for individual charging after a proper study and discussions with stakeholders. Being a multiple EV owner, I was put in charge of a group by the association to study and come up with proposals. Here is what we found (slightly long post!):

There are pros and cons for both methods of charging (common and in individual parking slots). But if you (and the association/owner-residents) think long term, letting owners draw the lines to individual parking slots is the only way.

There are practical difficulties in terms of common charging namely:

1) A few charging slots have to be shared by many. This will lead to time scheduling conflicts, especially considering most EV owners would want to charge overnight when the car is idle, and hence frequent interaction between the EV owners. This is not easy on a day to day basis. Vendors provided some apps to schedule the charging but not very effective/glitchy.

2) Keeping track of the electricity usage - It is mostly manual with common charging points, although some vendors are providing their own apps to track and bill each user.

Most of these apps were very buggy and not accurate during trials done in our building. Moreover, some vendors wanted to charge a fee for this, which does not work out in the long run.

3) Loss of visitor parking/common area parking slots: The setting up of common charging points had to be done in visitor parking slots and/or slots owned by the association, and dedicated only for EV parking. This was not well received since it would mean reducing the number of visitor parking slots, which was already in demand. My guess is this is the case in most apartment buildings.

4) The EV owner has to keep moving his EV from the common charging point(s) to his/her parking slot to charge up, keep track of the charging progress and then move it again after charge so that the other owners are able to use the charging points, creating one more task to be done every day for the EV owner. Was not welcomed and thankfully the association/other owners agreed.

Why we finally opted for individual lines to be pulled from respective owner meters:

1) Billing is directly to the owner.
2) No role / investment of the association (was welcomed by the section of owners who did not intend to buy EVs in the short or medium term).
3) It was done in a very scientific and clean manner, by a licensed contractor, using cable trays and properly sized cables. EV owners were not allowed to install the charging sockets on their own, to maintain uniformity and aesthetics of the installation (no wires visible at all anywhere in the basement).
4) Each owner was allowed to install one 3.3kW charging socket, more than sufficient to charge up a 2W EV within 3-4 hours and a 4W EV overnight.
5) Comfort and flexibility in anytime charging - Since the socket is in the owner's parking slot, he/she is free to charge up anytime at their own parking slot with full freedom, without the hassles of checking/coordinating to check if a common charging point is free or not.

Hope this helps!