EV users facing hassles due to delay in repairing charging station

BHARATPUR, JANUARY 8: Electricity Vehicle (EV) owners/users have faced difficulties with the charging station based at Muglin Bazaar, Ichhakamana rural municipality-5, Chitwan, remaining largely dysfunctional. It has been nearly two months since the charging nozzle of the station broke, thus rendering the two DC chargers useless. Only one AC charger installed in the station is functioning at present. It takes a longer time to charge vehicles only from the AC charger than the DC one.

Dhruba Gurung of Gorkha complained that service-seekers including himself are being hit by the technical problems in the charging station. As he said, one has to undergo the hassle of waiting for hours to charge vehicles using the AC charger. “My vehicle is charged only six per cent in 20 minutes. It used to be fully charged in just one hour when the charging station was fully functioning. Now, one has to wait for as long as  2-3 hours to fully charge the car.”

He complained that although the government has emphasized using electric vehicles, it has not paid attention to constructing additional charging stations and repairing the dysfunctional ones in time. According to him, people have to wait in queue for many hours to charge their vehicles since there are not enough charging stations.

Shiva Adhikari, project manager of Digo, the company which is responsible for constructing the charging station, said that the problem is due to the broken charging nozzle and they have already ordered the required spares that need to be changed.

He added that the equipment would be arriving in a day or two. He said the repair works would be carried out in a day or two by dispatching a technical team. Adhikari said 62 charging stations have been installed throughout the country through the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA). He stated problems have been detected in 20 of them.