Power Line Target For April-August Missed By 60%

(MENAFN- Live Mint) "New Delhi: Despite the foon boosting electricity transmission amid India's energy transition journey, the growth in extending power transmission lines has slipped in the current financial year.According to data from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), a total of 3,657 circuit kilometres (ckm) have been set up during the first five months of this fiscal (FY24), against a target of 8,784 ckm.This means only 22% of the target for the fiscal had been completed by August. The target for FY24 stands at 16,602 ckm. In August, only 330 ckm of transmission line was established against a target of 1,514 ckm.During the fiscal so far, a total of 1,469 ckm of transmission line has been set up under the central sector, while 1,679 ckm was set up by state government enterprises. The private sector, however, lagged the most as it set up only 509 ckm of transmission lines, which is only 23% of a target of 2,145 ckm for the April-August period.A lag was also seen in the setting up of substations as 16,531 substations have been established so far in the fiscal, which is 45% for this period. For the entire financial year, a target of 78,109 substations has been set.With a foon achieving an installed renewable energy capacity of 500 GW by 2030, the government is looking at expanding and upgrading the transmission system to integrate the 500 GW RE capacity. For enabling growth of renewable energy capacity, areas which have high solar and wind energy potential need to be connected to the Inter-State Transmission System (ISTS), so that the power generated can be evacuated to load centres. As the gestation period of wind- and solar-based electricity generation projects is much less than the gestation period of transmission system, it needs to be planned in advance. As a major step toward achieving the goal of 500 GW RE capacity, ISTS network has been planned for the projected RE capacity addition by the year 2030. The ministry of power had constituted a high-level committee for planning the transmission system required for having 500 GW of non-fossil fuel-based installed capacity by 2030. In March this year, the ministry accepted the recommendations of the panel which suggested a bouquet of technological and digital solutions.\//WEB//The task force has recommended Centralized Remote Monitoring, Operation of Substations including SCADA, Flexible AC Transmission devices (FACTs), Dynamic Line Loading system (DLL), Wide Area Measurement System (WAMS) using phasor measurement unit (PMU) and data analytics, Hybrid AC / HVDC system among others.The Task force also recommended benchmarks for transmission network availability and voltage control based on performance of global transmission utilities.A per the roadmap of for integration of of 500 GW renewable energy to the transmission system, the additional transmission systems of high voltage direct current transmission corridors at an estimated cost of ₹2.44 trillion.Considering the availability of renewable energy based generation for a limited period during day, the plan also envisages installation of battery energy storage capacity of the order of 51.5 GW by 2030 to provide round-the-clock power to end-consumers.Currently, the installed renewable energy capacity in the country stands at 173.619 GW, which is 41.4% out of the 417.668 GW of the total installed capacity.

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