CHENNAI: The proposed Chennai-Kanyakumari Industrial Corridor (CKIC) project, which is likely to generate more than 4.7 million additional jobs driven by annual manufacturing output of $222 billion, is taking shape with the state government strengthening the power infrastructure and resolving the constraints in evacuation of renewable energy from the districts in the southern Chennai-Kanyakumari Industrial Corridor.
As the government has already amended the Tamil Nadu Industrial Township Area Development Authority Act, 1997 (TNITADA) to create Special Purpose Vehicles for six nodes of the Chennai-Kanyakumari Industrial Corridor, the focus is on the $645 million Asian Development Bank loan, which will help in establishing the extra-high-voltage (765 kV) transmission link between Virudhunagar and Coimbatore to transfer the expected added generation capacity of 9,000 MW by 2025 in the southern CKIC to Coimbatore, which is a major industrial centre.
According to state electricity board officials, tenders have been awarded for the project and the work started in February this year. "The project is likely to be completed by June 2022 although the progress was slow since the month of March," an official told The New Indian Express, adding that the work which was slowed down due to the lockdown has now been resumed.
This comes as the districts in the southern Chennai-Kanyakumari Industrial Corridor are expected to contribute 9,000 MW of added generation capacity in the next five years. This includes 6,000 MW of renewable energy capacity. Official sources feel the existing transmission network capacity is inadequate to reliably evacuate power from these new renewable-energy-based plants in the southern CKIC.
As the demand for electricity and supply of renewable energy increase, the frequency and duration of curtailment of renewable-energy-based plants are likely to increase in the absence of a strengthened transmission network. This may deter further development of renewable energy in the region. This may also result in suboptimal operation of the power system including continuing to operate more expensive thermal power plants while curtailing the use of cheaper renewable energy sources. It is learnt that in the absence of a strengthened transmission network, the economic cost of supplying electricity would increase and greenhouse gas emissions would rise.
The project also includes the construction of a 400 kV/230 kV pooling substation at Ottapidaram and associated 400 kV transmission lines to pool power generated at renewable and thermal power plants in Thoothukudi district in the southern CKIC and transmit that power to the 765 kV/400 kV Virudhunagar substation. TANTRANSCO considered several alternative network configurations to meet the expected demand for transmission capacity and verified through engineering studies that the proposed solution is the optimum design configuration.
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