Power Grid asks cable and wire makers to scale up as transmission capex set to rise

Mumbai: State-owned Power Grid expects its capital expenditure to exceed the ₹40,000 crore it invested in FY26 as it steps up spending on transmission infrastructure to meet the country's growing electricity demand.

"Last year, we had a capex of about ₹40,000 crore, one single company, spending purely on transmission. And this year should be much higher," Vamsi Rama Mohan Burra, chairman of Power Grid, said at an industry event in the city.

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In May, Power Grid had guided an initial capital expenditure of ₹37,000 crore for the current fiscal. The company had raised its capex guidance last fiscal and is likely to do so this year as well, Burra had said.

Burra urged cable and wire manufacturers to expand their manufacturing capabilities, improve product quality and meet demanding project timelines as the expansion of renewable energy capacity, urbanisation and the growth of data centres create new opportunities for the electrical equipment industry.

He called on manufacturers of wires and cables to prepare for a substantial increase in orders, stressing that the growth of the transmission sector and the electrical manufacturing industry are closely interconnected.

The over ₹1 lakh crore wires and cables industry in India counts the transmission sector among its largest consumers. Some players get as much as a third of their total demand from the transmission sector.

Within this space, underground and submarine cables are growing rapidly, offering visibility into a long growth runway. India's power transmission network is evolving from a system primarily designed to connect generation and consumption centres into critical infrastructure that determines the reliability of the electricity sector and the ability of generators to sell power, Burra said.

"Today, if there is no transmission evacuation, we cannot sell that product," he said, highlighting the need to synchronise transmission development with the rapid addition of renewable energy capacity.

TRANSMISSION EXPANSION

The chairman highlighted the scale of India's ongoing transmission expansion, citing the addition of around 5,000 circuit kilometres of transmission lines and 72,000 MVA of transformation capacity during the previous financial year. The growing concentration of substations, combined with the need to evacuate electricity from renewable energy projects, is adding to the complexity of transmission planning and execution, he said.

While renewable energy projects can be developed relatively quickly, transmission infrastructure often requires longer gestation periods because of land availability, right-of-way constraints and the complexity of building new lines alongside existing networks.

Renewable energy projects, particularly solar projects, see intense usage of cables, Manjit Singh Sethi, president of Havells India, said. "While usage depends on the layout of land in solar projects, the requirement in such projects is pretty huge," Sethi said. Projects with Right-of-Way (RoW) constraints also lead to higher usage of underground cables, he said.

OTHER PROJECTS

Burra also said that the Green Energy Corridor-III programme, which involves investments of around ₹1.86 lakh crore, is another major opportunity for cable and wire manufacturers.