Centre to unveil National Electricity Plan in next 15 days: Manohar Lal Khattar

New Delhi: Union minister for Power and Housing and Urban Affairs Manohar Lal Khattar on Monday said the National Electricity Plan 2023-32 would be launched in next 15 days keeping in mind of increased power demand in coming years.

The new plan aimed at meeting a peak demand of 458 GW by 2032. There is a plan to extend transmission network to 6.48 lakh circuit kilometres (ckm) by 2032 from 4.85 lakh ckm in 2024, the Minister told media persons here.

Nine High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) lines of 33.25 GW capacity will be added in addition to 33.5 GW presently operating. Inter-Regional transfer capacity will increase from 119 GW to 168 GW, he said. The overall capex for expansion and upgradation would be Rs 9.15 lakh crore, he said.

The transmission network of 335 GW is planned to evacuate 280 GW of Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) to the Inter-State Transmission System (ISTS) by 2030. Out of this, 42 GW has already been completed, 85 GW is under construction, and 75 GW is under bidding and balance 82 GW will be approved in the coming days, he said.

A total of 12.8 GW of thermal power capacity has been awarded during the first 100 days of the new National Democratic Alliance (NDA), he said.

Another 28.4 GW of the targeted additional capacity of 80 GW to be installed by FY32 is under construction, he said. "28,400 MW is already under construction. Another 12,800 MW of contracts have been assigned in these 100 days, and will go into construction very quickly," he added

On agricultural feeders the Minister said that out of 80,631 feeders, 49,512 agricultural feeders where agriculture load is more than 30% have already been segregated. Segregation of the remaining 31,119 feasible feeders have been sanctioned to provide reliable daytime power supply to farmers, he said.