“Electric Vehicle ” Charging Systems Service Regulation in Turkey — Part 1

As of this Saturday, 02.04.2022, Turkey got its first official electric vehicle charging systems regulation. The regulation is only valid for charging system services that are not mobile, to reiterate, the regulation is not applicable for “Charge Your EV Vans” and anyone who is providing such a service for all those Teslas out there.

Let’s keep things a bit serious this time. If you had the chance to stumble upon my other writings you must have noticed how I like to keep things casual. Well this is not the case this time, when it comes to business I turn into a boring owl, so here it goes…

A Brief Look at History

Turkey has a relatively short history when it comes to EV Charging. Everything started back in 2017. First study groups got together to draft a regulation for EV charging systems and how they would be implemented in Turkey. The effort never bared fruit till 2022… The draft regulation that was prepared in 2017 circulated in a limited manner for review and it was never officially published in the official gazette.

Since the initial attempt to publish a regulation regarding EV charging systems, several minor changes were made to existing laws and regulations but till 2022 nothing so concrete as a full-force regulation has been seen.

After 2017, articles regarding EV charging systems were included into these regulations: “Planned Areas Zoning Regulation”, “Regulation on Business and Work Licenses”, “Regulation on Procedures and Principles for Increasing Energy Efficiency in Transportation” and “Parking Regulation”.

Most interesting change over the years has to be the new requirement of EV charging systems in buildings that have more than 20 car parks are required to include EV charging systems for at least 5% of the total parking lots. At least one parking lot being the bare minimum. This of course is valid for the residential units. When it comes to shopping malls or public buildings the requirement is raised to 10%. Of course till 2023, time for adjustment is given (Reducing the requirement levels to %2 and 5% respectively). Even though the above requirements are a must to obtain the building permit (Which being, the first official document you require in order to start building, as the name suggests), it is my own belief that the municipalities that are in charge of giving out building permits are not strict appliers of the regulation.

Other regulations describe EV charging stations/systems as a service and treats it almost like gas stations. Though the articles were a bit vague, it was a start.

And that, folks, brings us to 2022.

The New Regulation

The text turned out to be semi-serious so I will take it as a win and move on…

The new regulation’s name is “Şarj Hizmeti Yönetmeliği” which I translated into English as “EV Charging Systems Service Regulation”. The regulation basically describes on what grounds could a charging station be set up and how payment should be collected from the customers.

First things first, the authority in charge of charging stations has been named as Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK). All the licensing and other matters will be handled with EPDK. The technical design and projects on the other hand will be approved by the main electricity distribution company. Other local issues will be handled by the local electricity distribution company. So we have three authorities who in the end are actually in charge of different phases of the issue at hand.

As now we know who to turn to for our issues, let’s move forward with some definitions. Try to keep up with this part but pay no attention if it gets a bit complicated, it will be much clearer once I explain the pyramid suggested by the regulation.

• Main Access Platform: The platform prepared by the EPDK for real-time viewing of all existing charging stations, providing live data of charging stations and providing data exchange and other operations with standard protocols and interface,
• Certificate: The authorization certificate given by the charging network operator to a natural or legal person within the framework of the procedures and principles determined by the EPDK for the purpose of establishing or operating one or more charging stations within a charging network on behalf of the charging network operator
• Charging Network: A system created to provide charging services to electric vehicles at multiple charging stations and managed by the charging network operator
• Charging Network Operator: The licensee legal entity that provides charging service to electric vehicle users by opening access to the charging network and operating the charging network
• Charging Station Operator: The natural or legal person who operates the charging stations on-site and provides charging services to third parties at this charging station, within the scope of the certificate obtained from the charging network operator

To be Continued in Part-2