India's Interregional Transmission Expands, but Without the Cost Comparison That Should Come First

Engineering and construction firm Bajel Projects has secured two EPC orders valued at over ₹700 crore (about $84 million USD) under India's WR-ER Inter-Regional Network Expansion Scheme, Part A, with one package valued at ₹300-400 crore (Mega) and the other exceeding ₹400 crore (about $48M USD) (Ultra-Mega)^[2][5]. The first contract covers a 400kV double-circuit line linking Jamshedpur (New), Ranchi (New), and a new power station in Chhattisgarh; the second is a 765kV double-circuit line running from Raigarh (Tamnar) to Jamshedpur (New)^[3][6]. Together, they are expected to strengthen interregional power evacuation and improve grid connectivity across two of India's largest coal and renewable-generation states^[2].

The announcement itself is routine: a contractor wins work, meets a timeline, grid capacity expands. But it obscures a structural question that independent transmission planners in North America, Europe, and increasingly Australia now force into the record before a single tower is built: has anyone tested whether this new wires investment is the least-cost way to solve the constraint, or did the incumbent utility that benefits from new capex also decide whether the line was needed?

India's transmission planning, dominated by state and central public utilities (primarily Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd, or PGCIL), does not yet separate the planner's role from the builder's profit motive the way U.S. regional transmission organizations have begun to do. When a utility owns the grid and earns a regulated return on capital investment, every constraint looks like a wires problem. Grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) and non-wires alternatives that North American planners now evaluate before design, dynamic line ratings that measure actual thermal capacity rather than conservative seasonal assumptions, advanced power-flow controllers, topology optimization, storage-as-transmission, remain absent from India's standard pre-build checklist^{[research library, GETs framework].} A 765kV line from Raigarh to Jamshedpur likely is necessary for India's coal and renewable transition; the point is that no one can read the public record and know whether it was chosen over cheaper ways to move the same power.

The cost stakes are substantial. Competitively bid transmission projects in North American RTOs have repeatedly come in 20, 40 percent below cost-plus incumbent estimates, with explicit cost caps and cost-containment commitments absent from utilities' own builds^{[research library, Brattle competition studies].} If those savings ratios held in India's much larger geography and construction-cost environment, the difference on a ₹700-crore pair of projects could be ₹150, 280 crore (about $18, 34 million USD) in money that instead goes to other parts of the grid, renewable integration, or consumer bills.

The mechanism is not corruption; it is incentive. PGCIL's regulated return on capital creates the same structural bias that incumbent U.S. utilities exhibit: a planner-owner has no cost incentive to choose a ₹200-crore storage-transmission solution if a ₹400-crore wires solution earns the same allowed rate of return and doubles the asset base on which that return is calculated. The fix exists: require independent, transparent evaluation of grid-enhancing technologies and non-wires alternatives before committing to new transmission capital; apply cost-benchmarking studies to similar projects worldwide; and where planners and builders are the same entity, install an independent transmission monitor to screen major projects before they clear.