Question 1

What does "reserved capacity" mean for EV fleet charging?

Accepted Answer

It's a load-reservation agreement with a DISCOM or CPO that guarantees a fleet a minimum kW block at a depot or charging site, instead of competing for available capacity first-come. It's negotiated ahead of need and typically reviewed quarterly against the fleet's growth plan.

Question 2

How do group captive tariffs reduce EV fleet charging costs?

Accepted Answer

Under Section 42(2) of the Electricity Act, 2003, captive and group-captive consumers are exempt from the cross-subsidy surcharge (and additional surcharge) that standard open-access consumers pay — which can meaningfully lower the landed per-unit tariff for a depot large enough to structure as captive or group-captive, especially in states with a high cross-subsidy surcharge.

Question 3

What is UBC and how does it affect fleet charging roaming?

Accepted Answer

Unified Bharat eCharge (UBC) is the Ministry of Power and Bureau of Energy Efficiency's national interoperability framework, built on the OCPI protocol and the Beckn network layer, meant to let any EV user charge across participating networks with one app or account instead of bilateral agreements between every CPO pair. Until it covers every network a fleet actually uses, roaming terms are still worth negotiating directly into CPO contracts.

Question 4

Should a fleet operator have a direct agreement with the DISCOM, or is a CPO contract enough?

Accepted Answer

For anything beyond a handful of vehicles on public charging, both matter. The CPO contract covers charging service, tariffs and roaming; a direct or CPO-mediated relationship with the DISCOM is what secures reserved capacity and connection-timeline commitments for a depot as it scales.

Question 5

What charging data should a fleet ask for in a CPO contract?

Accepted Answer

Session-level data — energy delivered, session duration, fault or downtime codes, time-of-day breakdown — via API access, not just an in-app summary. This is what feeds fleet KPI tracking, ESG/CSRD-style reporting, and diagnosing whether a slowdown is a CPO or a DISCOM-side issue.

Question 6

How long does a new HT or 33kV connection typically take for a fleet depot in India?

Accepted Answer

Ministry of Power guidelines direct DISCOMs to connect a charging station within 7 days in metros, 15 in other municipal areas and 30 in rural areas — but fleet operators requesting new high-capacity transformer or substation capacity in several states have reported real timelines of 3 to 18 months, which is exactly why locking in reserved capacity ahead of scaling matters.

discom tariffs

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