Green fuel charging stations will ensure quick charging and greater adoption of electric vehicles, says Abhijeet Sinha

The third-generation ‘green fuel charging stations’, to be set up on a 5,500 km-stretch across 28 cities, will be a game changer as they will have hydrogen dispensing capabilities, apart from grid, solar and wind power, said Abhijeet Sinha, Project Director, National Highway for Electric Vehicles (NHEV).

Mr. Sinha, who is also the National Programme Director for Ease of Doing Business (EODB), was in the city to witness the demonstration of a Solid State Transformer (SST) and inauguration of a Power Electronic Lab at Lotus Wireless Technologies India Pvt. Ltd., at Aganampudi.

The green fuel charging stations will be established under the Bharatmala and Sagarmala projects in tune with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030. The charging infra set-up has been proposed to match the compliance reduction. This reform is intended to reduce the bottlenecks in implementation and boost the speed of adoption of e-mobility, Mr. Sinha told The Hindu.

The pilot project, covering 500 km in two stretches between Delhi-Agra and Delhi-Jaipur, was completed successfully. Of the remaining 5,000 km, the tech-trial run for the 332-km Chennai-Trichy stretch was completed in September this year. The other stretches, where work is in progress, are Chennai-Visakhapatnam and Visakhapatnam-Bhubaneswar.

The total cost for the upgradation of National Highways and Expressways into 23 e-Highways nationwide will be around ₹5,500 crore, of which the infra cost would be ₹3,762 crore. “The charging stations, to be funded by the Government of India, would be allotted on the PPP model,” Mr. Sinha said.

These stations will have hydrogen vending capabilities and robust charging infrastructure for EV cars, buses, two-wheelers and three-wheelers. “The 3,200 kw capacity charging stations would generate 800 kw each of solar, wind and hydrogen power apart from supplying 800 kw to the fossil grid.”

“The surplus power generated by the solar and wind systems during the day time can be stored as liquid hydrogen,” he said.

“This system is dependent on the technology developed by companies like LWT India. NHEV and LWT have come together, for the first time, to prototype these products on the 5,500 km e-highway. This hydrogen technology enables fast charging of heavy vehicles like trucks and buses within minutes. The next challenge is to impress upon manufacturers to make their vehicles compatible to accept all types of chargers.”

While Germany is struggling to complete its target of 4,000 km of e-highways by 2030 in that country due to high project cost and stagnant technology, their prototypes are being challenged by prototypes developed by Indian companies like LWT. The cost of conversion of 1 km of highway into e-highway is 22 crore as against ₹1 crore with the prototype developed by India. “We are confident of completing our e-highway target by 2027, i.e., three years ahead of schedule,” he added.