POWERGRID is working towards achieving its mission of Establishment and Operation of Regional and National Power Grids to facilitate transfer of power within and across the regions with reliability, security and economy, on sound commercial principles".
Following are the reasons for the formation of National Grid
1) The exploitable energy resources in our country are unevenly distributed, like Coal resources are abundant in Bihar/Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal and Hydro Resources are mainly concentrated in Northern and North-Eastern Regions. As a result, some regions do not have adequate natural resources for setting power plants to meet their future requirements whereas others have abundant natural resources. Demand for power continues to grow unabated. This calls for optimal utilization of generating resources for sustainable development. Thus, formation of National Power Grid is an effective tool to achieve this as various countries have adopted the model of interconnecting power grid not only at national level but also at international level.
2) Further, acquiring Right of Way (ROW) for constructing transmission lines is getting increasingly difficult, especially in eco-sensitive areas like North-Eastern Region, Chicken neck area, hilly areas in Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. At the same time, these areas are also endowed with major hydro potential of the country. This necessitates creation of �Transmission Super Highways�, so that in future, constraints in ROW do not cause bottleneck in harnessing generating resources. Inter-connection of these highways from different part of the country would ultimately lead to formation of a high capacity �National Power Grid�.
3) Thus, developments in power sector emphasize the need for accelerated implementation of National Power Grid on priority to enable scheduled/unscheduled exchange of power as well as for providing open access to encourage competition in power market. Formation of such a National Power Grid has been envisaged in a phased manner.
4) Initially, considering wide variations in electrical parameters in the regional grids, primarily HVDC interconnections were established between the regions. This was completed in the year 2002, thereby achieving inter-regional power transfer capacity of 5000 MW.
5) In the next phase, inter-regional connectivity is planned to be strengthened with hybrid system consisting of high capacity EHV/UHV AC and HVDC links. Such a National Power Grid is envisaged to disperse power not only from Mega sized generation projects but also to enable transfer of bulk power from one part of the country to another in different operational scenarios say, in varying climatic conditions across the country: Summer, Winter, Monsoon etc.
6) Commissioning of links under this phase has already begun with the commissioning of 2000 MW Talcher-II HVDC Bipole, Raipur � Rourkela 400kV D/C AC transmission line having Series Compensation, augmentation of Gazuwaka HVDC (500MW) back to back link and Tala transmission system.
7) The inter-regional transfer capacity of 16,200 MW is available as on date.
8) Further strengthening of National Power Grid is envisaged through high capacity AC EHV lines, 765 kV UHV AC lines/ HVDC lines. This phase is planned to be implemented by 2012 when inter-regional power transfer capacity will be enhanced to about 37,700 MW by the end of XI Plan, depending upon planned growth of generation capacity.
