This new transmission corridor of 400 KV will help meet the city’s growing electricity demand and enhance electricity distribution to as high as 15,000MW in future.
If approved, this project could take four-five years and may cost around Rs 1,000 crore. The transmission line will be in the form of a ring with two hemispheres of 30 km each. If one hemisphere fails, the other will act as a backup.
“In the absence of high voltage transmission lines within the city, the efficiency and reliability will be affected,” said Sanjay Banga, president of transmission and distribution at Tata Power, in Mumbai on Tuesday.
Currently, Mumbai’s demand of around 3,500 MW is met by 110 KV and 220 KV lines.
“With 400 KV lines, Tata Power can source double that capacity on single wire from outside Mumbai. It can even bring up to 15,000 MW of power on the same lines,” Banga added.
Tata Power also assured that this summer Mumbai will not witness any power shortage and that its load growth won’t be as high as national load growth.”We will not have any shortage of power in Mumbai. Our peak demand is around 1000 MW but our PPAs (power purchase agreements) are for 1400 MW. So even if demand goes up by 10%-20% it will not impact,” said Banga.
Tata Power has around 70 per cent share in power transmission of Mumbai. On October 12, 2020, Mumbai witnessed a power outage which lasted up to 12 hours in some pockets of the city. There have been two more outages after that, though of a lesser magnitude.
Vishwas Shrikhande, chief of transmission at Tata Power said that post the outages, the company has taken a series of measures, including a Rs 200 crore investment to up the transmission capacity for a line from Kalwa to Salsette to 1,800 MW from 1,200 MW.
The company said it has invested Rs 2,300 crore in improving transmission infrastructure over the last five years. This included replacing up to 90 per cent of the aged systems. The company plans to invest another Rs 700 crore over the next fiscal to better transmission. The company has also invested in a new SCADA system to improve its security architecture.
Tata Power expects Mumbai’s peak power demand to touch 4,000 MW this summer from the already increased 3,300 MW seen in recent days with increase in temperatures.
Banga said the quantum of increase will be lower in Mumbai as compared to the rest of the country, because the per capita consumption of power is much higher in the city at over 2,100 units as against 1,200 units nationally.
Tata Power scrip was trading at Rs 185.40, up 0.79% on the BSE Wednesday morning. Benchmark Sensex was up 0.02%.
