Power Grid Wins Humnabad Transmission Project in Karnataka: Rs 243.34 Crore a Year

Power Grid Corporation of India now holds the letter of intent for a new 400/220 kV substation at Humnabad in Bidar district, with the lines that tie it into north Karnataka’s grid. Nobody buys a machine on a letter of intent. It settles who will hand out the civil and erection packages here, and that is the list a plant owner in the region wants to be on.

What POWERGRID won, and what it left out

PSU Watch and Indian Masterminds both carried the filing on 12 November, and their figures match. Mercom India and Renewable Watch reported in February that PFC Consulting had floated the bid, with submissions due on 14 April. Renewable Watch’s account of that bid notice listed the line work as a loop-in loop-out of the 400 kV YTPS-Kalaburagi double-circuit line, 220 kV double-circuit lines to the Ganagapura and Santhapur substations, interconnecting transformers and bus reactors.

Three things are missing. No capital cost has been disclosed. No line length has been published. And nobody has said whether the yard will be air-insulated or gas-insulated, which matters more to an earthmoving contractor than any headline number.

Does this change what a contractor in north Karnataka should line up?

Not yet. The job splits in two, and the halves want different fleets.

The substation is one site and the steady work. A 3×500 MVA yard needs a graded, compacted platform, foundations for three transformers and the reactors, cable trenches and internal roads. That is motor grader and soil compactor hours, excavators and backhoe loaders on trenching, transit mixers or a small batching set-up, and a mobile crane for gantries and equipment placement. An air-insulated yard takes far more land than a gas-insulated one at the same voltage, so the platform job grows with it.

The lines run the other way. A LILO and two 220 kV double-circuit runs are tower pits strung along a route, a few days of digging and concreting at each before the crew moves on. That is a hire pattern: compact excavators and backhoe loaders that relocate, low-bed trips between locations, and an auger rig where the ground allows.

The money also lands later than the headline suggests. POWERGRID has split earlier schemes into substation and line packages, as with the 765 kV bay order SPML Infra took at Bhadla-III and Ramgarh. Those packages are where a machine owner gets paid, and none has been floated for Humnabad. North Karnataka’s dry working window runs roughly October to May, so the heaviest platform work could well fall in the 2027 dry season rather than this one. That is our reading of the sequence, not a disclosed schedule.

FAQ

Is Rs 243.34 crore the cost of the Humnabad project?

No. It is the annual transmission charge POWERGRID bid, the amount users pay each year once the system is running. The company has not disclosed a capital cost.

When will construction start at Humnabad?

No start date has been announced. The project company has to move to POWERGRID first, and the substation and line packages follow after that.

Which machines will the Humnabad substation need?

Platform and foundation work points to motor graders, soil compactors, excavators, backhoe loaders, transit mixers and a mobile crane. The line work is lighter and scattered, which suits hired compact plant.

Related on DesiMachines: Power Grid wins the Jam Khambhaliya transmission project in Gujarat

Source: PSU Watch

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