This decade is becoming a decade of electric vehicle penetration in India. There is a shift in government focus, and many policies have been put in place by many states for the adoption of EVs on a large scale. In the last five years, many states have started adopting EV buses for public transport. To keep pace with the government's aim and tight timelines for the rollout of EVs for public transport, the EV bus manufacturers have tied up with the experienced players in creating the electrical infrastructure for recharging stations in bus depots. Accordingly, being a Tata Group company, Tata Motors has tied up with Tata Power to develop the EV charging infrastructure for their EV fleets across India. Accordingly, Tata Power had developed and monitored more than 20 EV fleets (Depots) with charging infrastructure
This paper gives details of the maturity path that we have traversed in designing and developing the EV charging infrastructure across India in various terrains, from Jammu and Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Considering the EV charging load requirement, we must change the conventional substation designs that we use in our distribution network. There are many changes required to be made to improve the efficiency of the system, reducing losses and voltage drops in the network, and ensuring the power quality and reliability of the small network.
Based on the initial pilot installation experiences, we further improved the designs in the latest bus depots, and in many places, the design of the complete layout of charger placement has been changed to improve efficiency and space optimization. In regions like Gujrat and Mumbai, we made some changes to ensure charging during rainy days as well.
The paper also explains the metering and billing challenges we faced in initial installations and how we have evolved our network for monitoring consumption so that overall plant efficiency can be improved in new stations.
There were better aesthetic requirements for a few depots; hence, the substation design, equipment selection, and layout were developed with consideration of these requirements. India being a country with a diverse climate, from sub-zero in Kashmir to hot and humid in Chennai (Southern India), hence the specifications and equipment changes done.
On top of all the challenges and design solutions above, the use of the latest IOT devices for monitoring in EV infrastructure has been discussed in our paper. We have designed a compact, cost-effective, and better aesthetic infrastructure, which has been awarded in a few forums. This will be helpful for other utilities around the globe as a case study.
EV, Electric Vehicles, IOT, Internet of Things, DSS, Distribution Substation, Substation, PSS, Package Substation, EV Charing, Charing Infrastructure, Conventional EV charging infrastructure
