How to Set Up an EV Charging Station in Belagavi (Belgaum) 2026

Why Belagavi, and what the EV numbers actually say

That adoption rate is genuinely high for a non-metro Indian city, and it tells you something specific about what to build. An 18% EV share made up overwhelmingly of two-wheelers means a large and growing base of riders who charge at home and occasionally need a public top-up — an AC-charging market, priced low, with high utilisation and low margin per session. The 14 electric cars a month are a different and much smaller local market.

The paying customer for DC fast charging in Belagavi is therefore mostly passing through. Belagavi sits on NH-48 with the Hirebagewadi toll plaza at chainage km 482.600, which was recording around 27,249 PCU per day when last published in 2016. The Kognoli plaza near the Maharashtra border is at km 591.240. A driver heading north into Maharashtra or south towards Hubballi and Bengaluru will stop here, and that is where fast-charging revenue comes from.

The city's own economy is unusually electricity-intensive, which helps on the supply side: Belagavi's industrial power consumption of 526.62 MU exceeds its domestic consumption of 406.38 MU. Where industrial load already dominates, HT capacity and the engineering to connect to it exist locally.

Existing charging is concentrated around Nehru Nagar, Gogte Plaza and Kakti, with Ather Grid points serving two-wheelers. That leaves whole quadrants of a fast-growing city — and most of the NH-48 approaches — without convenient public charging.

Where to put a charger in Belagavi

The industrial belt is the obvious first look. Belagavi has estates at Udyambag, Machhe, Honaga, Kanagla, Kittur, Kakati and Auto Nagar, anchored by foundry, aerospace and automotive component manufacturing — Aequs Aerospace, Hindalco, Dalmia Cement and Ashok Iron among the larger names, with around 45 large-scale industries in the district. The land bank is tight at roughly 100 acres, with about 4,000 acres identified for acquisition, so industrial frontage is not abundant.

The airport is worth a look. Belagavi handled a little over 3 lakh passengers in FY2025-26, and although traffic fell year on year while Hubballi's grew, a new 20,000 square metre terminal costing around ₹230 crore is due by the end of 2026. Airport charging serves taxi fleets and long-stay parking, both good utilisation profiles. Note that Belagavi is a dual-use civil and Indian Air Force station, which constrains land use near the airfield.

There is one demand pattern here that exists nowhere else in Karnataka: the state legislature holds its winter session at the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha in Belagavi. That produces a concentrated December spike in official vehicles, visitors and hotel occupancy. It is seasonal rather than a business on its own, but it is worth knowing if you are choosing between two otherwise similar sites.

On public transport, 100 of the 200 electric buses sanctioned to NWKRTC under PM E-Drive are earmarked for Belagavi, with a five-acre depot planned; the Hubballi and Belagavi depots together are costed at roughly ₹31 crore across civil and electrical works. As elsewhere, depot charging is closed to outside operators, but the electrical groundwork and the visible fleet both help the wider market.

• NH-48 frontage near Hirebagewadi — through-traffic between Maharashtra and Hubballi
• Udyambag, Machhe and Honaga industrial estates — foundry and aerospace, heavy existing load
• Belagavi airport — taxi fleets and long-stay parking, with a new terminal due end-2026
• Hotels and commercial areas serving the December legislature session
• AC charging in dense residential areas — matches the two-wheeler-heavy adoption pattern

HESCOM connection and the Karnataka EV tariff

Belagavi is served by HESCOM, whose corporate headquarters are in Hubballi. One thing that surprises applicants: even though HESCOM is your distribution company, BESCOM is the designated State Nodal Agency for setting up EV charging stations across the whole of Karnataka. BESCOM also runs a Land Aggregator Portal that matches landowners with charge point operators, which is a legitimate route if you have land but not the appetite to operate.

The tariff is set by the KERC Combined Tariff Order 2025, dated 27 March 2025, covering the control period FY2025-26 to FY2027-28. Schedule LT-6(c) and its HT equivalent price EV charging stations at 450 paise per kWh — ₹4.50 a unit — with an LT fixed charge of ₹70 per kW per month of sanctioned load, or an HT demand charge of ₹200 per kVA per month of billing demand. The rates were set identically across all three years of the control period. KERC did reopen the 2025 order in March 2026 to revise several other categories, but LT-6(c) was not among them — worth re-checking before you model a long horizon.

The energy rate looks excellent next to Maharashtra's ₹9.25. The catch is the fixed charge. BESCOM, MESCOM and HESCOM all asked KERC to adopt a single-part tariff following the Ministry of Power's 2024 guidelines, and the Commission refused, reasoning that its two-part tariff already recovers only 51% of the average cost of supply and therefore delivers a larger concession than the guidelines contemplate. So a 60 kW DC charger carries roughly ₹4,200 a month in fixed charges before a single unit is sold.

Two further points that are widely misreported. Karnataka has no solar-hour discount or non-solar surcharge for public EV charging — the rate is flat all day, so the Ministry of Power's 0.7× and 1.3× model does not apply here. And the time-of-day table that appears in the LT-6(c) schedule applies only to bus depot charging for BMTC, KSRTC, NEKRTC and NWKRTC on HT supply, not to commercial public charging.

Karnataka public EV charging tariff, FY2026-27 (flat across the control period)

Karnataka subsidy and the road-tax change you must not get wrong

The operative policy is the Karnataka Clean Mobility Policy 2025-30, notified by Government Order CI 117 SPI 2024(e) on 11 February 2025 and gazetted the following day. It supersedes the 2017 EV and Energy Storage Policy and runs five years or until a new policy is announced.

For charging it is refreshingly specific. Clause 4.3.2.1 offers a capital subsidy of 25%, up to ₹10 lakh per station, for fast charging stations serving two-wheelers, three-wheelers, cars and buses, across 500 stations, and it applies to all zones at the same rate — the 25%/20% split people quote is the general manufacturing capex subsidy, not this. Clause 4.3.2.2 is blunt about slow charging: no incentives. Battery swapping gets 25% up to ₹3 lakh for two- and three-wheeler stations across 500 sites, and 25% up to ₹10 lakh for bus swapping across 200.

Two honest caveats. There is no viability gap funding in this policy — the word does not appear in the gazette, so any page claiming Karnataka VGF for charging is wrong. And while the policy is legally in force, no separate operational guidelines, scheme document or application window for the charging subsidy could be found as of August 2026. Treat it as gazetted but not demonstrably operationalised, and do not build a business case that depends on the money arriving.

The road-tax change is the item most likely to catch you out. The Karnataka Motor Vehicles Taxation (Amendment) Act 2026 was passed on 26 March 2026, received assent on 9 April and was notified on 10 April. Electric cars, jeeps, omni buses, private service vehicles and motor cabs now attract lifetime tax of 5% of cost up to ₹10 lakh, 8% from ₹10 to ₹25 lakh, and 10% above ₹25 lakh. Previously everything below ₹25 lakh was exempt. Electric two- and three-wheelers appear to remain exempt, as the amendment inserts no new part for them. This does not affect your charging station directly, but it affects your customers' purchase economics and therefore your demand curve.