CESL issues ₹5,500 cr tender to buy electric buses

NEW DELHI: Aggregating the demand put up by five major cities, Convergence Energy Services Limited (CESL), a PSU under power ministry Thursday floated the biggest ever tender for pure electric buses in the country. The ₹5,500 tender has been floated for 5,580 e-buses, of which 5,450 will be single decker e-buses and 130 will be double decker e-buses.

The tender floated on Thursday was the outcome of the “Grand Challenge” for e-buses which was initiated in June last year by the ministry of power and NITI Aayog. It was ideated after several state governments floated tenders with unstructured standards for e-buses and failed to get bidders. Gauging the lack of uniformity in the technical and financial specifications, the Centre decided to aggregate the demand of a few big cities as an experiment, which was then termed as the grand challenge. The grand challenge was open for nine cities with a population of more than 4 million, but ultimately five were able to meet the set requirements in terms of finances and paperwork.

Now under the programme, Kolkata will get 2,000 pure electric buses, Delhi and Bengaluru will have 1,500 e-buses each, while Hyderabad will get 300 and Surat 150 such zero emission buses. The first set of buses will start coming from July this year and the buses will go to cities as per the depot infrastructure readied by them. All the buses will have to be deployed maximum by March 2024, a senior CESL official said on condition of anonymity. Documents seen by HT showed that out of the five cities, Delhi currently is in the most advanced stage of upgrading all its depots with electric charging infrastructure for the buses. “The real meaning of aggregation across cities under an OPEX model is actually homogenisation. This Grand Challenge Tender is the biggest ever scheme in the world – and is based on an innovative, asset-light model that make it possible for STUS to deploy affordably and at scale,” said Mahua Acharya, MD and CEO, CESL.