Transmission project will also power pumped-storage boom in Satara, Pune and Mumbai region
Energy Solutions Limited (AESL), India’s largest private power transmission and distribution company, has won a major contract to build a transmission line carrying renewable energy generated in Karnataka to key demand centres in Maharashtra, a press release said.
The company said the roughly Tk 6,063 crore project will also reinforce the rapidly growing pumped-storage power network in Maharashtra’s Satara, Pune and Mumbai Metropolitan Region.
AESL is a group company of the Adani conglomerate. A separate Adani entity, Adani Power, supplies up to around 1,500 megawatts of electricity to Bangladesh from a dedicated plant built in Jharkhand, India, exclusively for that purpose — making it the single largest source of imported power to the Bangladeshi grid.
The new project forms part of AESL’s western India network expansion plan, designed to unlock up to 4,500 megawatts of pumped-storage potential near Satara. AESL was selected as the lowest bidder in a competitive tendering process for the work.
The project will be executed through a special purpose vehicle named Satara Power Transmission Limited, with a completion target of 36 months.
Once complete, the project will add 562 circuit kilometres of transmission lines and 9,000 MVA of transformation capacity to AESL’s network. That will take the company’s total transmission network to 29,739 circuit kilometres, with total transformation capacity rising to 143,425 MVA.
The scope of work includes setting up a high-capacity substation at Satara, laying a double-circuit high-voltage transmission line on the Kolhapur-Satara route, and expanding the Kolhapur pooling station.
AESL Chief Executive Officer Kandarp Patel said pumped-storage projects were emerging as one of the most important tools in India’s clean energy transition, since they allow renewable power to be integrated into the national grid at scale.
He said the Satara project would strengthen power transmission links between southern and western India and support the country’s long-term energy goals.
The transmission infrastructure is seen as critical to India’s target of achieving 500 gigawatts of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030. AESL currently supplies electricity to about 13 million
consumers across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region and the Mundra Special Economic Zone, and is also expanding rapidly in the smart metering business.
