How to open an EV charging station in Hyderabad

Hyderabad is the city we have the most verified data on, so this guide can be specific where most city guides are generic. Everything below is drawn from the Telangana tariff schedule and state policy documents we have archived, plus our own screening data for the district — with the parts we could not verify flagged rather than filled in.

1. The connection: TGSPDCL, and which category you fall in

Hyderabad is served by TGSPDCL (Telangana State Southern Power Distribution Company). Your application goes to them, and the first decision that matters is whether you connect at low tension or high tension — because the charge structures are genuinely different, not just differently priced.

Both carry the same ₹6.00/kWh energy charge for FY 2026–27, and FSA/FCA, electricity duty and other charges are extra in both cases — so ₹6.00 is not your landed cost. It is the starting line. We explain how to build the real number in what electricity actually costs.

The structural difference is the fixed leg. LT-IX carries no fixed charge, which is unusually favourable and matters enormously for a site with uncertain early throughput — you are not paying a monthly toll while demand builds. HT-IX carries ₹100 per kVA per month, payable whether you sell anything or not. On a 320 kVA connection that is ₹32,000 a month before a single vehicle plugs in.

2. Time of day: the ₹2 swing

On HT-IX, Telangana applies time-of-day adjustments as flat rupee amounts per unit:

The spread between the solar window and the peak window is ₹2.00 per unit — before FSA, duty and other additions. Against a DC service charge ceiling of ₹11 to ₹13 per kWh, that is a material share of your margin decided purely by when vehicles arrive.

And note the awkward part: the evening peak, 18:00 to 22:00, is exactly when a public urban charger is most likely to be busy. If your demand case is built on evening traffic, you are buying your energy at the most expensive rate. A site whose demand skews to the 10:00–18:00 window earns the same regulated service charge on cheaper input. That is worth modelling explicitly rather than assuming an average.

3. Approvals: TG-iPASS, and a 14-day deemed clearance

Telangana operates a single-window route. TG-iPASS clearance for charging infrastructure is stated at 14 days, deemed approved if not decided within that period from the date of application to the nodal agency. A deemed-approval provision is genuinely useful, and it is the sort of thing worth knowing exists before you assume an open-ended wait.

Alongside it sit the ordinary layers: electrical safety approval and inspection via the Chief Electrical Inspector as triggered, and any fire, municipal or development-authority NOC the specific parcel attracts. Those are site-triggered and vary by parcel — see what approvals actually apply for why no national checklist is honest.

Telangana’s EV policy also requires private players to set up ARAI-compliant charging and swapping infrastructure, with specifications to be defined by the Transport Department, the State Nodal Agency and the ITE&C Department. We record this with a caveat we think matters: when we verified it, the actual specification documents could not be located. Treat that as a question to put to the nodal agency in writing, not a box you can tick from a policy summary.

On connection timelines, the national area-type guideline of 3/7/15/30 days applies from a complete application — but it is guidance conditioned on network conditions, and it is not a guaranteed project schedule. Plan on your own critical path, not on the guideline.

4. If you are looking at a nodal-agency designated site

Telangana runs designated sites awarded through bidding, and the revenue share there has a published floor of ₹1/kWh of energy supplied. The important detail is structural: the bid parameter is the revenue share itself, so awarded rates can and do exceed the floor. If you are modelling a bid, ₹1/kWh is the minimum you will pay, not the number to plan on — and the amount by which you exceed it comes straight out of a margin that is already capped by regulation.

5. What the demand data actually shows

This is where Hyderabad differs from every other city we cover, because we have screening data for the district rather than impressions.

Statewide, only about 4% of cells clear a score of 60. In Hyderabad district, 229 of 233 do. The opportunity is genuinely concentrated here — and so, predictably, is the competition. Our registry places 213 station records within 6 km of a cell in the district, led by Statiq (157), Tata Power (21), ChargeZone (12), HPCL (11) and Reliance BP Mobility (10).

Two conclusions follow, and they pull in opposite directions, which is the honest picture. Hyderabad has the demand. Hyderabad also has established operators with hundreds of recorded points, so a new site competes rather than arrives first. The question is not “is Hyderabad good” — it is whether your specific plot beats the alternatives a driver already has within a few kilometres.

Modelled highway corridors crossing the district — NH-163, NH-44, NH-65, NH-765 and SH-1 — are where the intercity story sits, and it is a different business from urban charging with different dwell behaviour.

6. The sequence we would follow

1. Screen the plot before anything else. Geometry, electrical sizing and transformer requirement. This is cheap and it disqualifies sites fastest.
2. Establish the TGSPDCL position — existing sanctioned load, what your configuration needs, transformer adequacy, distance to an adequate feeder, and the connection charges for the gap.
3. Choose LT-IX or HT-IX deliberately, on how confident you are in early throughput, not on the headline energy charge — which is the same either way.
4. Model with the ToD windows that match your expected arrival pattern, not a blended average.
5. Start the TG-iPASS application and confirm the ARAI specification requirement in writing with the nodal agency.
6. Test the economics with your landed cost, then the debt coverage if you are borrowing.

What is still unconfirmed

Published deliberately, in the same spirit as our state references. For Telangana we have not verified from a primary document: the current FSA/FCA figure and the exact electricity-duty rate and treatment for this category (both are live values needing confirmation), and the ARAI specification documents referenced by the state policy. Two further fee entries in our register are recorded as discovery-only or confirmation-required and are therefore not published here as fees. Confirm all of these in writing with TGSPDCL and the nodal agency before financial commitment.

Sources

Reference information for planning purposes, not legal, engineering or financial advice. Tariff schedules change annually — confirm the current order with TGSPDCL before financial commitment. Found an error? Tell us.