Power Grid asks cable makers to scale up

Mumbai: State-owned Power Grid anticipates its capital expenditure surpassing the ₹40,000 crore invested in FY26 as it ramps up investment in transmission infrastructure to accommodate India's escalating electricity demand. Last fiscal year, the company's capital expenditure stood at around ₹40,000 crore, with a single entity focusing solely on transmission.

This fiscal year is expected to witness a significant increase, according to Vamsi Rama Mohan Burra, chairman of Power Grid, as reported at an industry event in the city.

In May, Power Grid had projected an initial capital expenditure of ₹37,000 crore for the current fiscal year. Burra had raised this capex guidance for the current fiscal as well. He urged cable and wire manufacturers to bolster their production capacities, enhance product quality, and adhere to stringent project timelines. The expansion of renewable energy capacity, urbanization, and the proliferation of data centers present burgeoning opportunities for the electrical equipment industry, according to Burra.

The transmission sector and the electrical manufacturing industry are intrinsically linked, with the over ₹1 lakh crore wires and cables industry in India being one of the largest consumers of transmission services. Certain players procure up to a third of their total demand from the transmission sector. Underground and submarine cables are witnessing rapid growth within this domain, offering promising avenues for future expansion.

As India's power transmission network transitions from a system primarily focused on connecting generation and consumption centers to critical infrastructure that ensures the reliability of the electricity sector and the ability of generators to sell power, Burra emphasized the necessity of synchronizing transmission development with the rapid addition of renewable energy capacity.

The chairman highlighted the scale of India's ongoing transmission expansion, citing an addition of approximately 5,000 circuit kilometers of transmission lines and 72,000 MVA of transformation capacity in the previous financial year.

The burgeoning concentration of substations, coupled with the need to evacuate electricity from renewable energy projects, is heightening the complexity of transmission planning and execution. While renewable energy projects can be developed swiftly, transmission infrastructure typically necessitates longer gestation periods due to land availability, right-of-way constraints, and the intricacies of constructing new lines alongside existing networks.

Renewable energy projects, particularly solar projects, consume substantial amounts of cables, according to Manjit Singh Sethi, president of Havells India. Projects with Right-of-Way (RoW) constraints further augment the utilization of underground cables.