India's 200,000-Megawatt National Grid System Needs 'Political Will' to Succeed

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--India's southern power grid is to be added to the country's central transmission system through 2014 by expanding transmission capacity to 65,500 megawatts (MW). India has five grid regions, and the southern grid is the only one so far to be added to the central transmission system.

The high-voltage link, which will connect the southern grid, is under construction and is scheduled for completion by January 2014. Once the southern grid is connected to the system, and all five regional grids will operate as a single system in synchronous mode. The national grid will then be the largest single system of its type in the world, both in terms of grid size and the massive system capacity of 200,000 MW.

The Raichur-Sholapu 765-kilovolt line now under construction will connect the southern region and will consist of two single-circuit lines with a total transmission capacity of about 4,200 MW.

Total transmission capacity addition, which was about 27,750 MW at the end of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-12), is expected to increase 136% to 65,550 MW by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-17).

Commenting on India's central transmission system, GE Energy's (NYSE:GE) (Fairfield, Connecticut) India President and CEO Banmali Agrawala said that the company finds India's system quite robust when compared to those in many developed nations. It is large and substantial, and actual failures have been minimal, he said.

However, Agrawala pointed out that the country needs political will to reinforce discipline to avoid situations like the recent massive grid failure.

"You will need to have the political will to make sure that the rules around sharing a resource like the grid are followed by all," Agrawala said.

Overdrawing of power quotas by some Indian states is believed to be one of the major reasons for the massive failure of three grids this month, cutting power supplies to 600 million people.

For related information, see August 1, 2012, article - India Faces Worst Power Outage in Nation's History.

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