The industry is expecting the government to invite bids for power transmission infrastructure projects worth ₹1.50 lakh crore in the next 18 months, Sterlite Power Transmission said on Thursday.
In December, the government had unveiled a plan with investment opportunities of about ₹2.44 lakh crore for building a transmission system for evacuating 500 gigawatts (GW) of non-fossil based energy by 2030.
“We expect that nearly 60-65% of these projects totalling ₹1,50,000 crore will come up for bidding in next 18 months since completion of all processes and then construction of projects will take another 4-5 years,” said a senior Sterlite Power Transmission official.
The industry expects the government to invite bids under tariff based competitive bidding (TBCB) for power transmission infrastructure projects as it accelerates creation of new power lines and green energy corridors to integrate rising share of renewable power, the official said.
As one of India’s leading transmission companies, Sterlite Power Transmission is keen to participate in the bidding process to increase its TBCB market share beyond the current 31% level.
The push to build transmission infrastructure will have a significant, multi-year impact on the order book for all the business lines of the company, the official said, adding his company’s revenues rose 37% year-on-year (y-o-y) to ₹4,784 crore for the nine-month period ended December 2022.
“The EBIDTA during this period rose 8% y-o-y to nearly ₹950 crore while the cash position has improved 4.8 times to ₹1,047 crore y-o-y for the corresponding period,” the official said.
Sterlite Power Transmission recently commissioned a major green energy corridor project, Lakadia-Vadodara Transmission Project Limited (LVTPL) in Gujarat with a capacity of 5,000 MW.
With 812 towers spanning seven districts in Gujarat, this transmission corridor is also one of the largest power transmission corridors built in India till date. It has also concluded the sale of its Khargone Transmission Ltd. (KTL) asset to IndiGrid at an enterprise value of about ₹1,497.5 crore.
