India has just approved plans for a high-capacity power transmission corridor to help bring electricity from generation to demand centers.
The 1,150-kilovolt (kV) system, which will be India’s highest-voltage power corridor, is expected to cost about $7.34 billion (688 billion Indian rupees). At present, most of India’s transmission network consists of 765-kV lines.
The plan, approved by the national transmission panel this week, is estimated to take about six years to build. The first phase of the power corridor project includes connecting the states of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and West Bengal and then linking with a 6,000-megawatt high-voltage transmission system.
The project will link soaring solar and wind power capacity in India’s western states such as Rajasthan to the large industrial hubs in the eastern part of the country in states such as Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and West Bengal.
India, the world’s third-largest country by electricity demand in 2025, had 27% of its electricity generated by clean energy sources last year, according to estimates by energy think tank Ember. India’s largest source of clean electricity was solar, meeting 9.4% of total demand in 2025. Wind and solar combined accounted for 14% of overall power demand. Last year, India overtook France and Canada to become the world’s fourth-largest clean electricity generator.
India is comfortably on track to meet its goal to have 500 gigawatts (GW) of non-fossil-fuel power capacity installed by 2030, after having just hit the 300 GW milestone, New and Renewable Energy Minister Pralhad Joshi said in August.
However, grid, flexibility, and transmission constraints amid limited battery storage forced India to curtail as much as 118.6 GW of solar and wind power capacity in September, data by India’s JMK Research & Analytics showed last month.
India also plans to soon mandate state-owned utilities to add energy storage capacity to take advantage of the clean energy boom with reduced waste of generated power amid lagging storage capacity, a senior official said last week.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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