Towards Electricity for All

The Indian power sector has grown to a large size in the last 60 years after the country´s independence in 1947, and it has opened up with unbundling into distinctive entities of generation, transmission, and distribution. With both public and private participation, reliable load forecasting, planning, and system operation ensuring security to meet the demand at each instant have become the utmost necessities in the context of having electricity for all by the end of current five- year plan (March 2012). In this context adequacy as well as reliability of existing transmission systems have assumed a great significance in the entire power sector. Beyond this period, with continued growth in the economy, projection in power demand and commensurate addition in generation capacity also call for large network expansion for the Indian National Grid as a whole. Enhancement of voltage level of transmission, both with HVAC as well as HVDC, for hauling power from surplus to deficit regions poses challenges that need to be overcome through adoption of technologies.