Mr. Neeraj Kumar Singal talks about his company’s offerings, its partnership with EVBox and exponential growth of EV charging over the next few years…
Let’s begin with a glimpse of your company’s presence and offerings in India?
Semco Infratech is a venture of Semco Group which is dedicated towards a sustainable future. This venture is working in 3 verticals:
a. Lithium-ion battery pack manufacturing: We provide a customised solution for lithium-ion battery packs and modules according to the customers need. The solution capacity ranges from a few kilowatts up to Megawatts. The solution is made with high precision machinery and tested multiple times before handing over to the customer.
b. Precision Equipment for battery assembly: Semco provides Precision Test and Measurement Equipment for Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing, EVSE infrastructure and Energy storage systems. Their partners have provided equipment to the world leaders like CATL, EVE, BYD, and many more. Semco Infratech is equipped with qualified sales and service engineers to assist with the client’s requirements and deliver innovative technologies with high value-added services to satisfy our global customer demands.
c. EV Chargers: In EV charging segment we are representing the world’s #1 EV charging solution provider “EV Box” in India. The product range has both AC (3.7-22kW) and DC (50-350 kW) chargers. The chargers are highly efficient and contain all the advanced features like smart charging, remote management and monitoring etc.
Could you tell us more about your product offerings and their specifications?
Ans: We provide a full range of EV chargers, the capacity starts from 3.7 kW to 22 kW in AC charging with AC type 2 output standard, 50-175 kW Fast DC Charging with CCS, ChaDeMo configuration and from 175-350 kW for Ultra-Fast DC charging with CCS and ChaDemo configuration. All the chargers are OCPP 1.5 and above based for Charger to backend communication and OCPI based for interoperability within the Mobility Service Providers. With over 75,000 charging points across more than 55 countries worldwide, we help electric drivers get access to charging infrastructure at any point in their journey.
On the software side, we provide a Platform As A Service solution Everon which provides a tailor-made solution to its customers and consisting of all the features one can ever think of for EV charging.
For smart charging, we also provide a firmware called SMATCH which gives you access to the smart charging features like Dynamic load balancing, Peak Shaving and Hub Satellite model for the EV chargers where you just need to have just a single smart charger and you can connect up to 20 simple chargers with that smart charger and they all will act as a smart charger.
Tell us a bit about the recent technology advancements in the sector which are driving the industry forward?
Ans: Recently, we have seen the integration of renewable energy and smart metering which is actually helping curb pollutants from the environment as generally, the energy we take to power up the vehicle comes from the conventional sources of energy like thermal power plants but with the integration of renewable energy the energy which we transfer to the vehicle is more greener. With the integration of smart meters, there are multiple benefits to many stakeholders in the value chain as the DISCOM will be able to easily calculate the exact load requirements, the V2G concept can be implemented easily.
What according to you are the current bottlenecks which may impede growth for this sector?
Ans: With the advent of new technology in the market we can surely see multiple bottlenecks which are hampering the growth of this industry, there are challenges from the government’s end like subsidy structure on the vehicles and the charging infrastructure, standardization of the EV charging technology which makes it difficult for the charging station owner to decide what kind of chargers should be installed as the good quality chargers comes with a cost. From the Infrastructure end there are challenges with the power supply and the power distribution infrastructure because someone wants to install a single combo charger with 122 kW output then they have to take into account the power distribution infrastructure which is required to supply adequate power to the chargers, also apart from the NCT region the average power quality and the power outages will create a big hassle as the whole business revolves around the average utilization time of the chargers. There are a few other basic challenges like the production of the lithium-ion cells in India.
How do you foresee the future growth of charging infrastructure for Electric Vehicles?
Ans: The EV charging sector will definitely grow exponentially in the next 3-5 years. As of now there are not many electric vehicles on the road, because the price of Li-ion battery is high and purchasing an electric vehicle for personal use is not viable and on the other hand if we use it for the commercial application then because of the battery constraints ( Low voltage and Low capacity) the operations runs very tightly. But the good thing is that the prices of the lithium-ion cells are coming down and as per the trend we can match the cost of an EV and ICE within the next 3-5 years and at that time the EV charging infrastructure market will see a boom as we have seen in the Solar and telecom sector.
Semco Infratech has recently partnered with EVBox, kindly tell us more about the association.
Ans: Since we always believe that if we are talking about a sustainable future then we must go for a product which can ensure long-term operation. EV Box has already proved themselves in this respect as in 2014 they have won a tender for 4000 EV Chargers for the city of Amsterdam and till date, the uptime of these chargers is 99.85% which in fact a remarkable feat for an EV Charger solution provider. As Semco and EV Box share the same ideology hence the synergy matched and we are their sole representative for the Indian Territory.
As of now, both organizations have a clear strategy of providing the most advanced, efficient, scalable EV charging solution which can ensure the growth of the e-mobility in India with great returns to the stakeholders in the value chain.
