PowerGrid mulls $4 bn annual capex for five years

Chennai: State-run Power Grid Corporation has drawn up annual capital expenditure plans worth about $4 billion for the next five years as part of its efforts to strengthen its presence in the transmission business, a top company official said today.

"As part of our capital expenditure plans for transmission, we spend about Rs 20,000 crore a year," Power Grid Corporation, director (operations), RP Sasmal said at the inauguration of the country's first Digital Substation Automation Competence Centre of Alstom Transmission and Distribution, at its Pallavaram facility in Chennai.[caption id="attachment_1101995" align="alignleft" width="380"] PowerGrid planning capex. Reuters[/caption]

Sasmal said the company plans to spend almost $4 billion every year for the next five years and has "already placed orders for Rs 80,000 crore worth of projects".

Elaborating, he said, "Our capital expenditure work is in progress for projects worth about Rs 40,000 crore."

Noting that the company had been developing several projects along with private player Alstom Transmission and Distribution, Sasmal said, in the last few years, the company has replaced about 2,696 numerical relays.

Observing that one of the prestigious projects with Alstom was the National Transmission Asset Management Centre (NTAMC) project in which about 192 substations would be operated from a remote location, he said, "In next two months, the substations will be operated from a Centralised place in Manesar from a remote (location)."

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The aim of the NTAMC was to have completely unmanned substations except for security personnel, Sasmal said.

The operations of the substations will be done from a remote location and the maintenance activities would be carried out by a maintenance service hub.

He said the focus should be on "cyber security" as it was relatively a "dark area".

"It is our mindset that needs to be changed. Anything you think (of developing) should be 10 years ahead from now," Sasmal said.

PTI