Power ministry relaxes guidelines for substation location in ISTS-TBCB projects
- April 7, 2025
The power ministry has relaxed norms for location of new substations associated with interstate transmission system (ISTS) schemes to be built by transmission service providers selected under the tariff-based competitive bidding (TBCB) mechanism.
In a recent communication, the Union power ministry has amended relevant portions in the standard bidding documents (SBD) comprising request for proposal (RfP) and transmission service agreement (TSA).
The relaxation has been allowed following representations to this effect made by transmission service providers, the communication states.
The amendment has to do with the actual location of greenfield substations (switching station or HVDC terminal or inverter station) within the scope of the transmission service provider (TSP) with respect to the location proposed by the bid process coordinator (BPC) in the survey report.
Accordingly,
- For a generation pooling substation, the actual location shall not be beyond 3 km radius of the location proposed by the BPC in the survey report
- For load serving substation, the actual location shall not be beyond 5 km radius of the location proposed by the BPC in the survey report
- For intermediate substation, the actual location shall not be beyond 10 km radius of the location proposed by the BPC in the survey report
Before the amendment, the actual location for a generation pooling substation or load serving substation could not be beyond 3 km radius of the location proposed by the BPC in the survey report. For intermediate substations, the radius limit was 10 km.
Hence, there is no change as far as generation pooling substations or intermediate substations, but a relaxation of 2-km radius has been provided for load serving substations.
According to industry sources, this relaxation has been made to mitigate land acquisition-related constraints. Developers of ISTS-TBCB schemes now have the flexibility of locating load serving substations within a larger radius of 5 km from the location suggested by the BPC in the survey report.
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Featured photograph (source: Linxon) is for representation only
