News
Adani Energy commissions transmission project to boost Mumbai's power supply
Summary
- Mumbai’s daily electricity demand is expected to hit 5,000 MW by FY25 from the current peak demand of 4,000 MW. This project is expected to contribute 1,000 MW or 20% of that
Mumbai: Adani Energy Solutions Ltd (AESL), previously known as Adani Transmission Ltd, on Monday announced the commissioning of the Kharghar Vikhroli Transmission Ltd (KVTL) project, a critical infrastructure project that will allow an additional 1,000 MW of reliable power for Mumbai to help meet its ever-growing demand for electricity and mitigate grid failures and power cuts.
Mumbai’s daily electricity demand is expected to hit 5,000 MW by FY25 from the current peak demand of 4,000 MW, according to Adani Energy Solutions, so 1,000 MW would constitute 20% the city’s power supply in FY25.
India’s commercial capital suffered a rare, crippling grid failure on 12 October 2020, when several parts of the city lost power for several hours starting at 10 am. The outage affected areas such as Worli, Bandra, Andheri, Kandivali, Navi Mumbai, and Thane, and disrupted suburban train services, offices and homes across the city.
According to an official from a Mumbai-based power distribution company, the outage was caused by the tripping of multiple transmission lines and transformers, including the Kalwa-Padghe and Kharghar inter-connecting transformers (ICTs), that supply power to Mumbai. This resulted in the city receiving only 360-400 MW of its required 1,200 MW of power.
Then on the morning of 27 February 2022, another power outage hit many parts of Mumbai, halting local train services on one of the lines. The BMC posted on Twitter that the outage hit the central, western, and southern parts of the city and was caused by the tripping of an MSEB 220kV transmission line on the Mulund-Trombay route. It later said power was restored by 10.53 am.
“The project is critical for Mumbai as the existing capacity of the transmission corridor is not sufficient to carry further power into the city," AESL said in a press statement.
The project, which comprises about 74 circuit kilometres (CK) of 400 kilovolt (kV) and 220 kV transmission lines and a 1,500 megavolt-ampere (MVA), 400kV gas insulated substation at Vikhroli, is the first 400kV substation of its kind in Mumbai.
AESL faced several challenges in laying the line, such as navigating difficult terrain, but used technology and innovation to overcome these. For instance, it built six towers in creeks using heavy rigs placed on floating barges. In urban areas, height restrictions in some locations were overcome by adopting special ‘horizontal configuration’ towers.
The KVTL project starts in the Kharghar area of Navi Mumbai, traverses through its urban locations and terminates at Vikhroli in Mumbai, the company said.
