Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL) is looking at energy storage as an emerging business area, according to K. Sreekant, CMD, PGCIL. The company was also looking at hiving off its telecom-related business into a new subsidiary.
Sreekant made these observations during the investor meet, discussing the company’s financial results for the first quarter of FY22.
Discussing the potentially increasing role of energy storage in the power transmission space, Sreekant said that there will eventually be fungibility between power transmission and energy storage. What this meant that is that when there is energy storage envisaged along with a power generation project, there will be less demand on power transmission infrastructure. In that sense, Sreekant said that power transmission and energy storage will eventually become interchangeable.
Responding to the growing importance of this new solution, PGCIL will soon be creating a dedicated team for energy storage.
Storage proposed for Leh
On the subject of energy storage, the PGCIL CMD also noted that for the proposed Leh transmission scheme, PGCIL has advocated the setting up of an energy storage system. It may be recalled that PGCIL has been mandated to prepare the detailed project report (DPR) for the Leh transmission scheme that envisages the creation of infrastructure to support the evacuation of 10-GW of upcoming renewable energy capacity.
The DPR for the Leh scheme has already been submitted to the Union power ministry and is currently under study. Though the project implementation modality has not yet been formally announced, Sreekant said that the ministry was veering towards awarding the project on RTM (regulated tariff mechanism) basis to PGCIL. This, however, was subject to the ministry’s final decision, which has yet to be taken.
The Leh transmission scheme is expected to cost around Rs.20,000 crore, for the first phase. This cost estimate is without factoring in the energy storage facility, Sreekant cautioned. The Leh transmission scheme will have four ±350kV HVDC terminals to be located at Pang, Nyoma (both in UT of Ladakh), Kaithal (Haryana) and Kashipur (Uttarakhand). There will be two separate transmission systems, each with a transfer capacity of 5 GW. These are Pang (UT of Ladakh) to Kathal (Haryana); and, Nyoma (UT of Ladakh) to Kashipur (Uttarakhand).
Also read : PGCIL To Sharpen Focus On Intrastate Transmission Network
Hiving off telecom business
K. Sreekant alluded to the possibility of hiving off the telecom-related business of PGCIL into a separate entity, which could be a subsidiary of PGCIL. The telecom business has a very small share in PGCIL’s total revenue but there is synergy in the power transmission and telecom business. This is because PGCIL can use its right-of-way for power transmission lines to lay telecom lines, which is usually done with the help of OPGW (optical ground wire) cables.
Explaining the rationale of hiving off the operations, Sreekant said that the telecom sector is evolving, and there are several aspects that are not related to power transmission. He noted that telecom-related activities going forward will involve, for instance, digitization and other network-centric features, which are really of the “non-transmission” type. This corporate restructuring is expected to take place during the July-September quarter (Q2) of FY22.
Featured photograph (courtesy: Fluence Energy) is for representation only
