Power Grid Corporation of India Limited is an Indian central public sector undertaking under the

ownership Ownership is the state or fact of legal possession and control over property, which may be any asset, tangible or intangible. Ownership can involve multiple rights, collectively referred to as title, which may be separated and held by different ...

of Ministry of Power,

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...

. It is engaged mainly in transmission of bulk power across different states of India. It is headquartered in Gurugram. Power Grid transmits about 50% of the total power generated in India on its transmission network.

History

The Power Grid Corporation of India Limited was incorporated on 23 October 1989 under the Companies Act, 1956 with an authorized share capital of Rs. 5,000 Crore (subsequently enhanced to Rs. 10,000 Crore in Financial Year (FY) 2007–08) as a public limited company, wholly owned by the Government of India with 51.34% stake in the company as on 31 December 2020 and as principal electric power transmission company for the country. Its original name was the "National Power Transmission Corporation Limited", was charged with planning, executing, owning, operating and maintaining high-voltage transmission systems in the country. On 8 November 1990, the firm received its Certificate for Commencement of Business. Their name was subsequently changed to Power Grid Corporation of India Limited, on 23 October 1992. Power Grid management started functioning in August 1991 and subsequently took over transmission assets from

National Thermal Power NTPC Limited, formerly known as National Thermal Power Corporation Limited, is an Indian central public sector undertaking under the ownership of the Ministry of Power, Government of India which is engaged in generation of electricity and ...

(NTPC),

National Hydroelectric Power Corporation NHPC Limited (erstwhile National Hydroelectric Power Corporation ) is an Indian government hydropower board under the ownership of Ministry of Power, Government of India that was incorporated in the year 1975 with an authorised capital o ...

(NHPC)],

North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Limited North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Limited (NEEPCO) is a central public sector undertaking. It is under the ownership of Ministry of Power, Government of India. It was formed on 2 April 1976 to plan, investigate, design, construct, gen ...

(NEEPCO),

Neyveli Lignite Corporation NLC India Limited (NLC) (formerly Neyveli Lignite Corporation Limited) is a central public sector undertaking under the administrative control of the Ministry of Coal, Government of India. It annually produces about 30 million tonnes of Ligni ...

(NLC), and other cmpanires such as NPC, THDC, SJVNL . in a phased manner ; it commenced commercial operation in January 1993. It also took over the operation of existing Regional Load Despatch Centers (RLDCs) from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), in a phased manner from 1994 to 1996, which have been upgraded and modernized with Unified Load Despatch and Communication (ULDC) schemes. The National Load Despatch Centre (NLDC) was established in 2009 for overall coordination at the national level. Later the company had diversified into the telecom sector for efficient use of its spare telecommunication capacity of unified load dispatch center (ULDC) schemes and also leverage on its country-wide transmission infrastructure. According to its mandate, the corporation, apart from providing a transmission system for evacuation of central sector power, is also responsible for the establishment and operation of regional and national power grids to facilitate the transfer of power within and across the Regions with reliability, security, and economy on sound commercial principles. Based on its performance, the firm was recognized as a Mini-Ratna Category-I Public Sector Undertaking in October 1998. It was conferred with the status of "Navratna" by the Government of India in May 2008 and "Maharatna" status in October 2019.

Business

Power Grid operates throughout India and covers 90% of country's interstate and inter-regional electric power transmission system and its business segments include Transmission, Consultancy, Telecom and ULDC/ RLDC. Its transmission network consists of roughly 168,140 circuit kilometers and 252 EHVAC and

HVDC A high-voltage direct current (HVDC) electric power transmission system (also called a power superhighway or an electrical superhighway) uses direct current (DC) for electric power transmission, in contrast with the more common alternating curren ...

substations, with total transformation capacity of 422,430 MVA as on 31 January 2021, and an availability of over 99%. Power Grid's interregional capacity is 75,050 MW. Examples of Power Grid-owned stations include the

Vizag back-to-back HVDC converter station The Vizag back-to-back HVDC station, or Visakhapatnam back-to-back HVDC station, is a back-to-back HVDC connection between the eastern and southern regions in India, located close to the city of Visakhapatnam, and owned by Power Grid Corporatio ...

, the

Chandrapur back-to-back HVDC converter station The Chandrapur back-to-back HVDC station is a back-to-back HVDC connection between the western and southern regions in India, located close to the city of Chandrapur. Its main purpose is to export power from the Chandrapur Super Thermal Power Sta ...

, the

India Sri Lanka HVDC Interconnection India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, and the

Talcher–Kolar HVDC system The Talcher–Kolar HVDC system, otherwise known as the East–South interconnection II is a 1450 km HVDC transmission connection between the eastern and southern regions in India connecting four states namely Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nad ...

. Power Grid is listed on both the

BSE BSE may refer to: Medicine * Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease, a neurodegenerative disease of cattle * Breast self-examination Stock exchanges * Bahrain Stock Exchange, Bahrain * Baku Stock Exchange, Azerbaijan * B ...

and the NSE. As of 30 September 2010, there were 792,096 equity shareholders holders in Power Grid. Initially, Power Grid managed transmission assets owned by NTPC,

NHPC NHPC Limited (erstwhile National Hydroelectric Power Corporation ) is an Indian government hydropower board under the ownership of Ministry of Power, Government of India that was incorporated in the year 1975 with an authorised capital ...

Limited and

NEEPCO North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Limited (NEEPCO) is a central public sector undertaking. It is under the ownership of Ministry of Power, Government of India. It was formed on 2 April 1976 to plan, investigate, design, construct, gene ...

Limited. In January 1993, the Power Transmission Systems Act transferred ownership of the three power companies to Power Grid. All employees of the three companies subsequently became Power Grid employees.

Powertel

Power Grid's telecom company, Powertel, operates a network of 47,735 Kilometers and points of presence in 688 locations across India.

Transmission network failures

About 2:35 a.m on 30 July 2012, the Northern Region Grid, which provides power to nine states in northern India including

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

, experienced a widespread outage due to a grid disturbance. Power Grid and POSOCO began work immediately to restore power. By 8:00 a.m. essential services had been restored, with 60 percent of the normal Northern Region Grid load restored by 11:00 a.m. Power supply was then restored progressively and by 12:30 p.m. power was extended to most of the cities and towns through Power Grid substations. The Northern Region Grid was brought back to normalcy to meet the demand of about 30 GW at 7:00 p.m. On 31 July 2012, the Northern Region Grid collapsed a second time, hours after the power supply had been restored to the northern region following the previous day's disruption. Eastern transmission lines also failed, disrupting power supply in

Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...

Haryana Haryana (; ) is an Indian state located in the northern part of the country. It was carved out of the former state of East Punjab on 1 Nov 1966 on a linguistic basis. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with less than 1.4% () of India's land ar ...

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fourt ...

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

and

Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising ...

, among other states. After the power failures, then-Power Minister

Veerappa Moily Marpadi Veerappa Moily (born 12 January 1940) is an Indian politician belonging to the Indian National Congress from the state of Karnataka. Moily was the former Chief Minister (and the first ethnic Tuluva CM) of the Indian state of Karnataka ...

said that transmission grids would be independently audited in three months to ensure that the grids were fail-safe.

PowerGrid InvIT initial public offering

In late April 2021, PowerGrid floated an offer for sale via the Infrastructure Investment Trust (InvIT) route. The offer opened on 29 April and closed on 3 May, by which the initial public offering was subscribed 4.83 times. This was the second InvIT initial public offering in the country.

Historical landmarks

Following are the historical landmarks in the lifetime of the company from the date of formation: 2008 - completed the 220 KV Double Circuit Transmission line from Pul-e-Khumri to Kabul Transmission System in Afghanistan. 2006 - Commissioned the unified load despatch and communications scheme for the western region and also entered into an agreement with REC and certain state governments and state utilities for undertaking rural electrification works under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana in nine states in India. 2005 - Commissioned the unified load despatch and communications scheme for the eastern region. 2003 - Entered into a joint venture arrangement with the Tata Power Company Ltd for implementing a part of the entire transmission system associated with Tala Hydro-Electric Project, was the first public-private sector initiative in the transmission sector and commissioned the 400 KV Raipur-Rourkela line transmission line developed by it and also securing their first international consultancy contract from Bhutan Telecommunications. 2002 - Commissioned the unified load dispatch and communications schemes for the northern and southern regions and also commissioned the 2,000 MW Talchar-Kolar bipolar HVDC link developed by it. 2001 - Department of Telecommunications, GoI, granted Infrastructure Provider II license (IP II),to pursue leasing of bandwidth capacity to various customers on their telecommunications network. 1996 - Acquired the management of the remaining two regional load despatch centres, the Northern Regional Load Despatch Centre and the Western Load Despatch centre. 1995 - Acquired the management of the Eastern Regional Despatch Centre and the North Eastern Load Despatch Centre. 1994 - Took over the management of Southern Regional Load Despatch Centre and transmission assets from Neyveli Lignite Corporation Ltd were transferred to the company.

Notes

External links

Official Website

{{authority control Electric power transmission system operators in India Converter stations Electric power transmission infrastructure in India Ministry of Power (India) Government-owned companies of India Companies based in New Delhi Energy companies established in 1989 Indian companies established in 1989 NIFTY 50 BSE SENSEX 1989 establishments in Haryana Companies listed on the National Stock Exchange of India Companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange