Power sector to attract Rs 17 trn in next 5-7 years: Union minister Singh

Domestic power industry is expected to attract investments of 17 lakh crore over the next 5-7 years, Union Minister R K Singh said on Thursday.

The sector has seen investments of Rs 20 lakh crore in the last nine years, the Minister for Power, New and Renewable Energy was quoted as saying in a release by the power ministry.

"During my tenure, we spent about Rs 2 lakh crores in constructing about 3,000 new substations, upgrading about 4,000 substations, adding 8.5 lakh circuit kilometres of HT (high transmission) and LT lines and 7.5 lakh transformers," Singh said while addressing an event here.

On capacity addition, he said the country added 190 GW of power generation capacity, increasing it to around 436 GW during the said period.

India added 200,000 circuit kilometres to transmission lines and the transmission system is the largest integrated transmission system in the world. It can transfer 116 GW of power from one corner of the country to another.

"We are going to come up with bids for 4,000 MW of storage capacity, and we have also started 50 GW of pumped storage projects at different stages," Singh said.

The minister also said that the pace of renewable energy capacity addition in India is the highest in the world. The country's non-fossil capacity is about 186 GW, out of which 7 GW is nuclear and the remaining are solar, wind, and hydro.

The module manufacturing capacity has gone up from 20 GW to 50 GW, and cell manufacturing capacity from 2 GW to around 12-13 GW, he said.