Execution of transmission line projects with innovative methods for augmentation of ehv network in Mega City of Mumbai-Challenges & Solutions Maharaja U K, Surange Vishwas, Murugan P, Deshmukh Sandeep, Verma P.S., Deodhar M V The Tata Power Company Limited Online published on 20 April, 2019. Abstract India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world with an expected growth rate of 7.4% in 2015–16. Mumbai Mega City is the financial capital of India. The city of Mumbai is one of the most densely populated cities in the world which has a population density of 20694 per sq km. Mumbai power demand has increased from 2360 MW in 2004 to 3416 MW in 2015 resulting in a load density of above 6 MW per square km and a growth rate of more than 8% in some parts of the suburbs. To meet the rapid load growth in a mega city like Mumbai, the existing infrastructure for Generation, Transmission and Distribution needs to be augmented in a planned manner. The load pattern of Mumbai includes combination of Industrial, Residential including high rise buildings, Refineries, Continuous Process Industries, Railways, Airport and many other essential services which warrant uninterrupted power supply. Therefore, in addition to meeting the growing demand, the reliability of power supply has also to be maintained. The load growth in Mumbai can be met only by importing power from far off Generating Stations for two fold reasons. Firstly, it is not feasible to set up new Generating Station in Mumbai due to stringent pollution norms and secondly non-availability of land and the existing Generating Plants capacity inside Mumbai is not sufficient to meet the entire demand of Mumbai. Therefore, the city depends to a great extent on import of power, which is decided by adequacy of power transfer facility through interconnecting tie lines between the state grid and the city. The contingency arising out of short fall of embedded Generation capacity (due to forced outage of Generation units) or severance of interconnection with State Grid poses a potential threat to the supply to millions of consumers in the city. Mumbai being an island city is surrounded by sea on three sides and all the incoming transmission corridors to Mumbai traverse through creek or marshy land covered with mangroves which require approvals from statutory authorities for construction of new lines. Construction of overhead transmission lines on new corridors is also not feasible in Mumbai due to severe space constraints and non availability of transmission line corridors. Therefore augmentation of EHV transmission network supplying the city and load centers within the city has become imperative for TATA Power, the major Transmission utility supplying electricity to the Nation's financial hub. To meet the city's energy requirement, only possibility is to augment existing transmission network with innovative ideas considering the constraints being faced due to socio environmental aspects. Majority of these augmentation projects are pertaining to existing transmission line network which require special consideration. Since these projects are not green field, the challenges of working safely within the confined space, constraints of minimizing the shut downs and meeting the customer requirements, form integral part of meticulous planning the execution of the project. This paper describes the challenges faced to augment EHV network in the mega city of Mumbai and innovative solutions implemented to overcome the challenges while executing the projects. Top Keywords Load Growth, Transmission Line corridors, Right of Way (ROW), Augmentation of EHV Transmission network, Socio-Environmental aspects, Innovative Ideas. Top |