Pratik Agarwal,
Head Infrastructure Business,
Sterlite Technologies Ltd

Pratik Agarwal- Head
Infrastructure Business,
Sterlite Technologies Ltd,
speaks to Neeraj Dhankher
about power transmission and
power trading issues in the
country. Excerpts.
Please tell us a little bit about the
situation with the power sector
in India today. One often hears
a lot of discussion about broad
infrastructure in India. Could you
tell us a little bit about how you
see the state of the industry?
Broadly speaking, the power sector in
India has a bright long-term outlook
due to double-digit growth in Yearon-
Year (YOY) consumption of
electricity. However, in the short term
there will continue to be challenges
in the generation space primarily due
to fuel availability and in some cases,
unviable Power Purchase Agreements
(PPAs). In the medium term, once
these two problems are resolved the
much larger challenge will be to
turn-around the distribution sector and
make the power distribution companies
(Discoms) financially viable. Without
a thriving retail business, the upstream
business of generation will continue
to struggle. I believe this will be the
biggest challenge for the incoming
government, and one that will take
4-5 years to resolve that too if tough
decisions are made upfront; within first
12 months of the new regime.
Sterlite is also executing multimillion
dollar power transmission
system project across India. What
is the status of the project?
Sterlite has bagged 6 projects from
the government of India to deliver
over 4000 circuit kilometers of EHV
lines across the length and breadth of
the country. These projects are spread
across 10 states. Our first line has been
(partially) charged since September
2013 and has become the critical
link between the Eastern Grid and
Northern Grid. The balance projects will
commission progressively in the coming
months. We have faced tremendous
challenges in terms of delayed
clearances, force majeure events
like riots and floods;
yet we are proud to
say that we will
be finishing all
our projects in
record time.
Once completed,
our lines will
transport 5000 mw
of cheap pit-head
power from the power
rich regions, to the power hungry
states. This will have a tremendous
impact on power availability in these
states, and will also reduce the cost of
power dramatically.
What events do you expect in
your industry sector over the next
few months? Are these hurdles or
catalysts?
The power transmission space is
going to see an unprecedented growth
in the coming five years. The power
transmission sector alone will attract an investment of $40 billion in next five
years. The next five years could be
the inflexion point where India
takes the giant leap and comes on
similar pedestal as US and China
as far as power transmission
networks are concerned.
Who is your competition? What
differentiates you from them?
There is going to be a huge
infrastructure spending in Power sector.
Sterlite is uniquely positioned in market
to participate in these projects with
proven capabilities of delivering end-toend
solutions including a comprehensive
portfolio of electricity transmission
products; electricity transmission
network deployment, operation and
maintenance. With a Sustained focus
on technology and engineering, we are
the only company, fully integrated from
raw material to product manufacturing
to network solution designing and developing infrastructure in the power
transmission domain.
What is your take on power
transmission and power trading
issues in the country? Has it
lapped a long way or still it has to
go a long way?
It still has a long way to go. In India,
considerable amount of consumers
are power deprived and there are
a lot of Generators like Captive
Power Plants (CPPs) that are underutilized.
Transmission constraints
and congestions hinder the effective
connectivity between generators and
consumers and hence discourages the
power trade between distant locations.
There is a need to plan better power
transmission networks so that the
power hungry states are connected to
the generators.