India's transmission grid beat back summer surge, but capacity risks remain

Investments in transmission capacity, digital systems, grid-stability technology helped India manage record summer demand, though experts warn that generation reserves, distribution remain weak links

Transmission is the middle link in the electricity value chain, and the usual suspect in renewable energy supply delays. And yet, it was the key to helping India manage the past two summer months, when power demand surged to record highs, driving up grid volatility.

 

Behind the transmission grid's ability to handle those events is a 2-3 year period of massive upgradations in both capacity and technology, allowing glitch-free power transfer from producers to consumers, while maintaining grid safety and security.

 

To give credit where it is due, consider the numbers.

 

The season's peak demand climbed from 214.9 Gigawatt (GW) on April 1, 2026 to a record 270.8 GW on May 21, a 26 per cent surge in just 50 days. It was also 17 per cent higher than the record high of 230.99 GW recorded in the corresponding period last year. A few years ago, a spike of this scale and intensity would have meant widespread outages across states. This time, the lights largely stayed on.

 

"That is not an accident. It reflects years of deliberate investment in transmission infrastructure, building inter-regional corridors, strengthening load dispatch coordination and expanding grid interconnections," said Udai Singh, managing director and chief executive officer (CEO), Schneider Electric Infrastructure, and vice president (Power Systems), Schneider Electric India, a grid modernisation and automation firm. "The grid held because the country invested in making it hold. The challenge now is not to be satisfied with that. Demand will keep climbing and preparedness needs to stay one step ahead of it."

 

That preparation was critical, as it turned out. Over the past few years, the country's transmission infrastructure has grown and upgraded at a rapid rate. In particular, the shift to high-voltage direct current (HVDC) technology has been a game changer, allowing the country to move large volumes of renewable power across vast distances with significantly lower losses. The Green Energy Corridor programme has also played a part, building dedicated evacuation infrastructure so that solar and wind energy generated in Rajasthan or Gujarat can reach states that need it. Additionally, the country's inter-regional transmission capacity has now reached 120 GW.

 

"What is equally encouraging is the digital transformation happening alongside this physical buildout. Grid monitoring, predictive maintenance and smarter substation management are all maturing rapidly as part of advancing energy technology across our infrastructure," said Singh, adding that the real opportunity lies in connecting the transmission progress to a distribution network that is equally intelligent and responsive.

 

Prashant Sinha, CEO of Resonia Ltd, a large private sector power transmission infrastructure developer and solutions provider, agrees improved transmission system played a major and crucial role in managing the record power demand witnessed during May and June 2026.

 

"Coordinated efforts by the Ministry of Power, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), the Central Transmission Utility of India Limited (CTUIL) and Grid-India ensured stronger inter-regional transmission capacity, improved grid coordination and better preparedness across the power ecosystem enabling electricity to be transferred efficiently from surplus to deficit regions, and preventing any large-scale grid disruption during this period," he said.

 

One of the driving factors behind the technological advancements has been the need to integrate large-scale renewable energy (RE) while optimising existing infrastructure. As a result, policy planners and companies shifted their focus from just building new assets to deploying technologies that enhance grid capacity, flexibility, and reliability.

 

Apart from the HVDC, another key technology intervention was deploying High Temperature Low Sag (HTLS) conductors, which can carry up to twice the power as conventional conductors but with almost 25 per cent lower transmission losses. This made HTLS conductors a quick solution for increasing capacity where acquiring new right-of-way (RoW) was challenging.

 

"The sector has also seen rapid progress in Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) and Static Synchronous Compensator (STATCOM) technologies for voltage stability and reactive power management, digital and Gas Insulated Switchgear (GIS) substations that improve operational efficiency while reducing land requirements, and AI-enabled monitoring systems that enable predictive maintenance and real-time asset management. In addition, Dynamic Line Rating (DLR) is emerging as a transformative technology by optimising transmission capacity based on real-time weather conditions, allowing utilities to unlock additional capacity from existing transmission corridors without major capital investment," Sinha said.

 

Anil Rawal, MD & CEO of IntelliSmart Infrastructure Ltd, a provider of large scale smart metering and digital power solutions, also credits robust network management for handling the peak highs, adding that Ultra High Voltage AC (UHV-AC) and HVDC transmission links allowed the grid to handle both high loads and high variability.

 

Despite these gains, some experts are quick to point out the lack of capacity diversity that afflicts the Indian grid. "When every region is under the same heatwave at the same time, there is little diversity left for the network to use. The system still needs capacity that can be turned on at 10 p.m.," points out Rohit Vijay, an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP). "At the peak, dispatchable capacity was operating at around 90 per cent of what was available. That is not a system failing. It is a system with very little spare capacity, and it was spare generation capacity, not network capacity, that was in short supply."

 

In other words, transmission readiness should not be judged only on the peak day, since the same network was curtailing solar in Rajasthan and Gujarat through the same quarter.

 

The April peak of 256 GW was largely met without shortage, but in May, when demand hit 270 GW, the system faced marginal shortfalls of 0.18 GW during solar hours and 2.57 GW during non-solar hours, suggesting that the system coped but with a much thinner margin.

 

"The system sustained primarily because these peaks now occur during solar hours, when the sun itself does much of the heavy lifting. Solar supplied over a fifth of demand at the moment of the record peak, and earlier that afternoon, it was meeting close to a third of national generation, supported by strong resource adequacy planning and real-time coordination among the national and regional load dispatch centres," said Charith Konda, lead energy specialist at the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).  

 

Overall, the most significant advancements in India's power transmission sector have been in three areas. The first is long-distance bulk power transfer. The country has commissioned some of the world's largest HVDC links, such as the ±800 kilovolt (kV) Raigarh-Pugalur line, which was commissioned in October 2021 and carries 6,000 MW over 1,830 kilometres from central India to the southern grid. The National Electricity Plan (Transmission) is planning nine more HVDC links and will take inter-regional transfer capacity from 119 GW today to 168 GW by 2032.

 

Second, grid-stability technologies like FACTS and STATCOMs have helped in a big way. The third factor, and possibly the most forward-looking, is the emergence of battery energy storage systems (BESS) as a "virtual transmission" asset. Batteries placed near congestion points absorb surplus solar power and release it when corridors have spare capacity, eliminating the need for expensive new transmission lines.

 

According to Dhruv Garg, energy finance analyst at IEEFA, India needs to move from static five-year transmission planning cycles to adaptive, unified generation-transmission planning, backed by single-window clearances and standardised RoW compensation. In fact, land acquisition and RoW disputes remain among the biggest causes of project delays, and addressing them would significantly compress timelines and costs.

 

"On utilisation, the priority should be fixing the distortions in how existing capacity is allocated and used before committing to new construction. Around 71 percent of the ISTS corridors currently operate below 30 percent utilisation, while speculative hoarding of transmission capacity has pushed connectivity premiums in congested corridors to several times the official charge, creating artificial scarcity for genuinely ready renewable projects," Garg said.

 

Another key area that needs attention is capital. The scale of transmission investment required through 2032 is far beyond what traditional public financing can deliver alone. One way out would be to scale asset monetisation through Infrastructure Investment Trust (InvIT) and alternate ownership and management of transmission (AOMT)-style models, which have already demonstrated their viability in India by attracting institutional capital into operating transmission assets.

 

Broadly, going forward the country must focus on building transmission and distribution capacity ahead of demand, while accelerating grid digitalisation, automation and storage integration, said Simarpreet Singh, ED and CEO of Hartek Power, a large EPC company with presence in power systems, renewables and distribution products.

 

"Faster clearances, streamlined right-of-way processes and better coordination between generation, transmission and distribution planning will be equally important. The objective should be to build a grid that is not only larger, but more flexible, resilient and ready to support India’s energy transition," he said.

 

However, experts also noted that while the transmission story is broadly encouraging, distribution needs to be given equal priority. The country's AT&C losses have come down from 21.91 per cent in FY21 to 16.12 per cent in FY24, which reflects the positive impact of the Revamped Distribution Sector Strengthening (RDSS)scheme but there is still much ground to cover.

 

"The more important conversation is about what comes next. India is adding renewable capacity at a pace the world is watching, but generation alone does not complete the energy transition. Power must move efficiently, reliably and intelligently from the point of generation all the way to the end consumer. That last mile is where the gap still exists," Schneider's Singh said. Countries which will lead the energy transition are not just the ones that generate the cleanest power, he notes, but the ones that build the smartest infrastructure to deliver it, and India has every reason to be in that group.