The Power Grid Corporation of India Limited, is an Indian state-owned Maharatna company headquartered in Gurugram, India and engaged mainly in Transmission of Power. POWERGRID transmits about 50% of the total power generated in India on its transmission network. Its former subsidiary company, Power System Operation Corporation Limited handles power management for National Grid and all state transmission utilities. POWERGRID also operates a telecom business under the name POWERTEL. Shri Kandikuppa Sreekant serves as the Chairman and Managing Director of the company.
Origin
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 as a public limited company, wholly owned by the Government of India. Its original name was the 'National Power Transmission Corporation Limited', and it was charged with planning, executing, owning, operating and maintaining high-voltage transmission systems in the country. On 8 November 1990, the National Power Transmission Corporation received its Certificate for Commencement of Business. Their name was subsequently changed to Power Grid Corporation of India Limited, which took effect on 23 October 1992. POWERGRID started functioning on management basis with effect from August, 1991 and subsequently it took over transmission assets from NTPC, NHPC, NEEPCO, NLC, NPC, THDC, SJVNL etc. in a phased manner and it commenced commercial operation in 1992–93. In addition to this, it also took over the operation of existing Regional Load Despatch Centers from Central Electricity Authority, in a phased manner from 1994 to 1996, which have been upgraded and modernized with State of-the-art Unified Load Despatch and Communication schemes. Consequently, National Load Despatch Centre was established in 2009 for overall coordination at National level. According to its mandate, the Corporation, apart from providing transmission system for evacuation of central sector power, is also responsible for Establishment and Operation of Regional and National Power Grids to facilitate transfer of power within and across the Regions with Reliability, Security and Economy on sound commercial principles. Based on its performance POWERGRID was recognized as a Mini-ratna category-I Public Sector Undertaking in October 1998. It is conferred with the status of "Navratna" by the Government of India in May 2008 and "Maharatna" status in October 2019. POWERGRID, as the Central Transmission Utility of the country, is playing a major role in Indian Power Sector and is also providing Open Access on its inter-State transmission system.
Business
POWERGRID operates throughout India. Its transmission network consists of roughly 1,53,635 circuit kilometers and 243 EHVAC and HVDC substations, which provide total transformation capacity of 3,67,097 MVA. POWERGRID's interregional capacity is 75,050 MW. Examples of POWERGRID-owned stations include the Vizag back-to-back HVDC converter station, the Chandrapur back-to-back HVDC converter station, the India Sri Lanka HVDC Interconnection, and the Talcher–Kolar HVDC system. POWERGRID is listed on both the BSE and the NSE. As of 30 September 2010, there were 792,096 equity shareholders holders in POWERGRID. Initially, POWERGRID managed transmission assets owned by NTPC, NHPC Limited and NEEPCO Limited. In January 1993, the Power Transmission Systems Act transferred ownership of the three power companies to POWERGRID. All employees of the three companies subsequently became POWERGRID employees.
POWERTEL
POWERGRID's telecom company, POWERTEL, operates a network of 47,735 Kilometers and points of presence in 688 locations across India.
About 2:35 a.m on 30 July 2012, the Northern Region Grid, which provides power to nine states in northern India including Delhi, experienced a widespread outage due to a grid disturbance. POWERGRID 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 POWERGRID 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 Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal, Assam and Punjab, among other states. After the power failures, then-Power Minister Veerappa Moily said that transmission grids would be independently audited in three months to ensure that the grids were fail-safe.
