Odisha clears Rs 15,948.7 crore for its first 765-kV power grid

Odisha's cabinet, chaired by Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi, has approved Rs 15,948.7 crore to expand the state's transmission network, the largest single power-sector outlay the government has passed. Chief Secretary Anu Garg told reporters the money sits under the Mukhya Mantri Shakti Bikash Yojana and is meant to carry industrial load that does not yet have wires, and to move solar power that does not yet have a path to the grid.

The headline item is Odisha's first 765-kilovolt network. Three 765-kV substations are planned at Khuntuni, Duburi and Kolabira. A line at that voltage moves large blocks of power over long distances with lower loss than the 400-kV system the state has used until now. That is the geometry required if steel plants, data centres and solar parks are going to share one grid rather than sit on separate, congested spurs.

The rest of the voltage ladder

Two new 400-kV substations were approved at Kansbahal and Titilagarh. Five 400-kV stations already run. Six more are being built. The two new ones take the planned total to 13 and push the 400-kV grid farther into western Odisha.

At 220 kV the cabinet approved ten more substations. The state had 48 of those stations until 2024. Six have opened in two years and 11 are under construction. With the new ten the count is meant to reach 75. Officials said the extra nodes will close 220-kV rings around Rourkela, Sambalpur and Bargarh. The Bhubaneswar ring was finished in March.

Garg said 79 substations will be rebuilt or upgraded and that Odisha Power Transmission Corporation's transformation capacity is projected to rise from 29,889 MVA to 63,364 MVA. OPTCL also plans camera and model-based inspection of lines rather than only scheduled walking crews.

Why the state is spending this much now

The government points to more than Rs 20 trillion of projects that have been announced or are in the pipeline: steel, aluminium, chemicals, manufacturing, data centres, semiconductors and renewable plants. Those files do not draw power from a press release. They draw it from a 765-kV bus and from 220-kV rings that do not trip when a furnace starts.

The same grid is being asked to take floating solar at Hirakud and Indravati and ground-mounted parks in the west and south. Evacuation is the usual missing piece in Indian solar. Odisha is trying to build the missing piece before the panels rather than after them.

Rs 15,948.7 crore is an approval, not a stringing schedule. Land, tenders and the time it takes to put a 765-kV tower in the ground will decide whether Khuntuni, Duburi and Kolabira are stations or lines on a slide. The cabinet has at least named the substations and the voltage. That is more precise than most state power announcements, and it is the part industrial offtakers will read first.