India’s state owned power transmission company PowerGrid Corporation of India (PGCIL) has commenced operations of the first leg of the 6GW Raigarh-Pugalur high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission project.
The company has commissioned the first pole of the 1,765km HVDC transmission system that runs from Raigarh in Chhattisgarh to Pugalur in Tamil Nadu.
The transmission system will enable the flow of 1.5GW of power from Western Region to Southern Region, Press Trust of India reported.
The first leg of the project is said to have been completed despite the challenges and lockdown restrictions faced during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The remaining three Poles will be commenced in phases during the 2021
The first leg of the HVDC system is expected to evacuate power generated by Independent Power Producers (IPPs) in Chhattisgarh.
According to the company, the remaining three power transmission lines are in advanced stages.
The balance portion of the transmission system is expected to undergo a phased integration during the financial year 2021.
PGCIL and its subsidiaries had 164,511ckm (circuit kilometres) of transmission Lines, 249 sub-stations and more than 414,774 MVA of transformation capacity, as of 31 August 2020.
In July 2018, GE Power’s Grid Solutions business commissioned the first phase of the grid-stabilization system, Wide Area Monitoring System (WAMS), for PGCIL.
Executed by GE T&D India, the project was part of the Unified Real Time Dynamic State Measurement (URTDSM) initiative, which involves monitoring and controlling of the electricity supply across the country.
