Charging as a Service: Access Without Requiring Every Resident to Own Charging Hardware
India does not need every resident to own a charger. It needs every resident to have dependable access to charging.
November 13, 2026. By News Bureau
India has built many more public charging stations in four years, yet most sit underused while millions of apartment residents cannot charge where they park. The answer may lie in treating charging as managed capacity rather than a socket for every household.
Every few months, a resident association somewhere in India holds the same meeting. A resident has bought an electric car and wants a charger in their parking bay. The committee, which has no wish to be obstructive, points out that the building’s electrical load was designed for lifts, water pumps and air conditioners. Nobody planned for cars. The resident leaves frustrated, and the committee leaves worried about the next request.
It is easy to read this as a dispute between neighbours. It is better read as a signal about how India has chosen to build charging infrastructure, and what that choice is missing.
Chargers Where Cars Pass, Not Where They Sleep
The public network has expanded quickly. India had around 5,000 public charging stations in 2022 and 29,151 by December 2025, according to the Ministry of Heavy Industries. In July, the government told Parliament that the national portal lists more than 52,000. Yet SBI’s April 2026 sector report estimates utilisation at just 1 to 3 per cent at most stations.
The explanation is where the cars are. The AEEE-Kazam study of June 2026 notes that 70 to 75 per cent of urban households live in multi-family buildings. A survey cited in the same report found that only 55 per cent of prospective EV buyers have feasible home charging. We have built charging along highways and in malls, where cars pass. We have left it largely unsolved in the places where they spend the night.
For anyone who works in power, this is not really a vehicle story. It is a distribution story about who gets capacity, when, and under what rules.
What a Society’s Transformer can Actually Carry
India’s policy default is sensible for independent homes. Under the Ministry of Power’s 2024 guidelines, a resident can install a private charger in a designated parking bay and apply to the distribution company for more sanctioned load if needed. In a housing society, the same rule asks each household to solve a shared problem alone.
The evidence suggests many cannot. In the AEEE-Kazam dataset of more than 80,000 residential charger installations, nearly 45 per cent of homes needed electrical work before charging was safe, most often for tripping breakers, poor earthing or burnt sockets. The authors caution that the sample is not representative and leans towards two- and three-wheelers, but the lesson travels. The same report notes that many urban transformers already run at 80 to 90 per cent of capacity at peak, and that most private EVs charge at that same peak.
Do a rough sum. Take a transformer in the 400 to 800 kVA range with 10 to 20 per cent headroom left. That leaves 40 to 160 kVA, enough for perhaps five to twenty cars charging at 7.4 kW, the rating the guidelines suggest public operators offer. A society with a few hundred flats cannot give every owner their own 7.4 kW point without a network upgrade.
The Socket is Idle Most of the Day
Here is the part that gets lost. The problem is power, not energy. The AEEE-Kazam report cites projections that EV charging will grow from about 0.2 per cent of national electricity demand in 2024 to around 6 per cent by 2035. That is no threat to the generation. It becomes a problem only when demand lands at the same hour on the same transformer.
Consider what a car actually needs. Driven 40 km a day at roughly 150 Wh per km, it uses about 6 kWh. A 7.4 kW charger delivers that in under an hour, which means a household charger works for perhaps 3 to 4 per cent of the day. We have sized it for the worst instant and left it idle for the rest. That is not far from the 1 to 5 per cent utilisation of public stations. It is the same pattern in a smaller box.
Buildings already know how to solve this. No resident buys their own lift. We share lifts, pumps and backup generators because pooled capacity, managed by someone accountable, serves everyone better than duplicated equipment. Charging is starting to look like another building utility.
Treating Charging as a Service
That is the idea behind charging as a service. An operator owns and runs the equipment and manages the load, and residents pay for the energy or a subscription rather than buying hardware. Because demand is pooled, capacity can be sized on diversity rather than on the sum of every household’s peak. Because someone manages it, charging can be scheduled around the transformer’s headroom, the solar hours and the building’s own load. Battery storage can soak up energy when the grid is relaxed and release it when cars plug in. And one operator answers for safety, uptime and billing instead of dozens of separate installations.
None of this needs a leap of regulation. The 2024 guidelines already let a society or a resident request a separate metered connection with a dedicated EV tariff, and let societies set up charging in consultation with the distribution company. They define smart charging as a way to ease transformer overloading. They set an objective of shifting charging to solar hours, price supply to stations at 0.7 times the average cost between 9am and 4pm and 1.3 times outside it, and recognise solar carports with battery storage. Rubix notes that subscriptions and site-host revenue sharing are already established among charge point operators.
The economics reinforce the logic. In Rubix’s indicative costing, the civil and electrical work for an AC charging bay (INR 1 to 3 lakh) costs more than the charger itself (INR 0.4 to 1.5 lakh). The connection, in other words, is the expensive part, and the per-household model multiplies it. Operators also pay for sanctioned capacity whether or not anyone plugs in, so utilisation decides who makes money. A shared service spreads one connection across many users.
Where it can go Wrong
A service model is not a shortcut around physics. Storage moves energy in time. It does not create it. Where the upstream network is genuinely short of capacity, an upgrade is still needed, so every deployment should begin with a load audit.
Safety is the second test. Several states have restricted or conditioned basement charging on fire-safety grounds, and the Bureau of Indian Standards has proposed changes to the National Building Code. Battery-backed systems will need clear standards of their own.
The third is fairness. Societies and operators need contracts that settle metering, liability and exit terms, and pricing that residents can see. There is also a regulatory gap worth closing. Community charging fees are set within service-charge ceilings of INR 3 to 4 per unit for AC and INR 11 to 13 for DC, and it is not yet clear how those ceilings apply to an operator-run service.
What has to Change
Three shifts would do most of the work.
First, plan for energy and time, not sockets. States are already required to assess charging demand every year. Extending that to transformer-level headroom would tell societies and operators where capacity exists and when.
Second, bring existing buildings into the picture. Model building bye-laws recommend 20 per cent EV-ready parking in new multi-unit buildings but offer nothing for the buildings where most owners actually live. Haryana’s April 2026 amendment, which requires one charging spot for every five parking slots and EV-ready conduit in new group housing, shows the direction. A retrofit pathway should follow.
Third, fund and measure what matters. PM E-DRIVE earmarks INR 2,000 crore for public charging, but it flows through public entities, with the top subsidy tier tied to free public access, so a private society cannot reach it. By July 2026, 6,562 chargers had been sanctioned and none installed. Meanwhile, we still count stations when we should count kilowatt-hours delivered per connected kVA, and uptime.
Back to the Meeting
The resident association meeting will keep happening. What changes is the question. It should not be whether to say yes or no to the next charger, but how to share the capacity the building already has. India does not need every resident to own a charger. It needs every resident to have dependable access to charging. Whether through shared bays, battery-buffered systems or mobile units that move between vehicles, the test is the same: does the model use the grid we already have more intelligently?
- By Anil Kumar, Founder and CEO of Charger on Wheels
Every few months, a resident association somewhere in India holds the same meeting. A resident has bought an electric car and wants a charger in their parking bay. The committee, which has no wish to be obstructive, points out that the building’s electrical load was designed for lifts, water pumps and air conditioners. Nobody planned for cars. The resident leaves frustrated, and the committee leaves worried about the next request.
It is easy to read this as a dispute between neighbours. It is better read as a signal about how India has chosen to build charging infrastructure, and what that choice is missing.
Chargers Where Cars Pass, Not Where They Sleep
The public network has expanded quickly. India had around 5,000 public charging stations in 2022 and 29,151 by December 2025, according to the Ministry of Heavy Industries. In July, the government told Parliament that the national portal lists more than 52,000. Yet SBI’s April 2026 sector report estimates utilisation at just 1 to 3 per cent at most stations.
The explanation is where the cars are. The AEEE-Kazam study of June 2026 notes that 70 to 75 per cent of urban households live in multi-family buildings. A survey cited in the same report found that only 55 per cent of prospective EV buyers have feasible home charging. We have built charging along highways and in malls, where cars pass. We have left it largely unsolved in the places where they spend the night.
For anyone who works in power, this is not really a vehicle story. It is a distribution story about who gets capacity, when, and under what rules.
What a Society’s Transformer can Actually Carry
India’s policy default is sensible for independent homes. Under the Ministry of Power’s 2024 guidelines, a resident can install a private charger in a designated parking bay and apply to the distribution company for more sanctioned load if needed. In a housing society, the same rule asks each household to solve a shared problem alone.
The evidence suggests many cannot. In the AEEE-Kazam dataset of more than 80,000 residential charger installations, nearly 45 per cent of homes needed electrical work before charging was safe, most often for tripping breakers, poor earthing or burnt sockets. The authors caution that the sample is not representative and leans towards two- and three-wheelers, but the lesson travels. The same report notes that many urban transformers already run at 80 to 90 per cent of capacity at peak, and that most private EVs charge at that same peak.
Do a rough sum. Take a transformer in the 400 to 800 kVA range with 10 to 20 per cent headroom left. That leaves 40 to 160 kVA, enough for perhaps five to twenty cars charging at 7.4 kW, the rating the guidelines suggest public operators offer. A society with a few hundred flats cannot give every owner their own 7.4 kW point without a network upgrade.
The Socket is Idle Most of the Day
Here is the part that gets lost. The problem is power, not energy. The AEEE-Kazam report cites projections that EV charging will grow from about 0.2 per cent of national electricity demand in 2024 to around 6 per cent by 2035. That is no threat to the generation. It becomes a problem only when demand lands at the same hour on the same transformer.
Consider what a car actually needs. Driven 40 km a day at roughly 150 Wh per km, it uses about 6 kWh. A 7.4 kW charger delivers that in under an hour, which means a household charger works for perhaps 3 to 4 per cent of the day. We have sized it for the worst instant and left it idle for the rest. That is not far from the 1 to 5 per cent utilisation of public stations. It is the same pattern in a smaller box.
Buildings already know how to solve this. No resident buys their own lift. We share lifts, pumps and backup generators because pooled capacity, managed by someone accountable, serves everyone better than duplicated equipment. Charging is starting to look like another building utility.
Treating Charging as a Service
That is the idea behind charging as a service. An operator owns and runs the equipment and manages the load, and residents pay for the energy or a subscription rather than buying hardware. Because demand is pooled, capacity can be sized on diversity rather than on the sum of every household’s peak. Because someone manages it, charging can be scheduled around the transformer’s headroom, the solar hours and the building’s own load. Battery storage can soak up energy when the grid is relaxed and release it when cars plug in. And one operator answers for safety, uptime and billing instead of dozens of separate installations.
None of this needs a leap of regulation. The 2024 guidelines already let a society or a resident request a separate metered connection with a dedicated EV tariff, and let societies set up charging in consultation with the distribution company. They define smart charging as a way to ease transformer overloading. They set an objective of shifting charging to solar hours, price supply to stations at 0.7 times the average cost between 9am and 4pm and 1.3 times outside it, and recognise solar carports with battery storage. Rubix notes that subscriptions and site-host revenue sharing are already established among charge point operators.
The economics reinforce the logic. In Rubix’s indicative costing, the civil and electrical work for an AC charging bay (INR 1 to 3 lakh) costs more than the charger itself (INR 0.4 to 1.5 lakh). The connection, in other words, is the expensive part, and the per-household model multiplies it. Operators also pay for sanctioned capacity whether or not anyone plugs in, so utilisation decides who makes money. A shared service spreads one connection across many users.
Where it can go Wrong
A service model is not a shortcut around physics. Storage moves energy in time. It does not create it. Where the upstream network is genuinely short of capacity, an upgrade is still needed, so every deployment should begin with a load audit.
Safety is the second test. Several states have restricted or conditioned basement charging on fire-safety grounds, and the Bureau of Indian Standards has proposed changes to the National Building Code. Battery-backed systems will need clear standards of their own.
The third is fairness. Societies and operators need contracts that settle metering, liability and exit terms, and pricing that residents can see. There is also a regulatory gap worth closing. Community charging fees are set within service-charge ceilings of INR 3 to 4 per unit for AC and INR 11 to 13 for DC, and it is not yet clear how those ceilings apply to an operator-run service.
What has to Change
Three shifts would do most of the work.
First, plan for energy and time, not sockets. States are already required to assess charging demand every year. Extending that to transformer-level headroom would tell societies and operators where capacity exists and when.
Second, bring existing buildings into the picture. Model building bye-laws recommend 20 per cent EV-ready parking in new multi-unit buildings but offer nothing for the buildings where most owners actually live. Haryana’s April 2026 amendment, which requires one charging spot for every five parking slots and EV-ready conduit in new group housing, shows the direction. A retrofit pathway should follow.
Third, fund and measure what matters. PM E-DRIVE earmarks INR 2,000 crore for public charging, but it flows through public entities, with the top subsidy tier tied to free public access, so a private society cannot reach it. By July 2026, 6,562 chargers had been sanctioned and none installed. Meanwhile, we still count stations when we should count kilowatt-hours delivered per connected kVA, and uptime.
Back to the Meeting
The resident association meeting will keep happening. What changes is the question. It should not be whether to say yes or no to the next charger, but how to share the capacity the building already has. India does not need every resident to own a charger. It needs every resident to have dependable access to charging. Whether through shared bays, battery-buffered systems or mobile units that move between vehicles, the test is the same: does the model use the grid we already have more intelligently?
- By Anil Kumar, Founder and CEO of Charger on Wheels
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