India's central transmission system to become world's largest

India will add its southern grid to the central transmission system by 2014 ramping upits transmission capacity to 65,500 MW.

Of the five grid regions that the country is divided in, the southern grid is the only one that is yet to be added to the central system of transmission.

The high voltage link to connect the southern grid is under construction and is likely to be completed by January 2014. Once this is achieved, all the five regional grids will operate as a single system in synchronous ode. This will be the largest single such system in the world, both in terms of the grid size and system capacity of a whopping 2,00,000 MW.

The specific line which is under construction for connecting the southern region is the Raichur-Sholapur 765 KV

line. In fact, these are two single circuit lines and the total transmission capacity of these two lines would be about 4,200 MW.

As far as capacity addition in transmission is concerned, the total capacity was about 27,750 MW at the end of the 11th plan, and this is expected to increase by 136% to 65,550 MW by the end of the twelfth plan.