(ET)
The government will soon auction power transmission contracts worth over Rs 8,000 crore connecting renewable energy projects in western and northern states while it has deferred a decision on lines worth Rs 5,500 crore. Minutes of a meeting of National Committee on Transmission (NCT) held on December 4 showed that contracts worth about Rs 3,500 crore have been awarded on nomination basis to Power Grid Corp (PGCIL). Private sector firms such as Tata Power, Adani Power Transmission, L&T Infra, Torrent Power, Kalpataru Power Transmission and Megha Engineering had earlier bid for such contracts.
The government has also compressed the timeline for implementing the projects to 18 months while setting September 2020 as the target completion date for some projects. Power transmission companies have welcomed the move but have demanded the government to half the auction timeline from the planned 140 days to 70 days. The companies have also said the government can auction transmission lines instead of deferring them and a green signal can be given later to the selected company to match the schedule of generation projects.
