New 220kV substation to come up in Sector 75 to meet growing power demand

A HVPNL official said that the tender for laying the transmission lines of up to three kilometres for power supply to the substation was finalised last week and work order to the selected firm will be issued soon.

The Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam Limited (HVPNL) has decided to construct a high-capacity substation of 220kV in Sector 75 to meet the growing power demand of people and improve the supply quality, mitigate outage issues in residential areas along the Southern Peripheral Road, Sohna road and Delhi-Jaipur expressway, officials said on Thursday.

According to officials, the tender for the construction work has already been floated which is expected to be finalised in two months. (HT Photo)

According to officials, the tender for the construction work has already been floated which is expected to be finalised in two months.

A HVPNL official said that the tender for laying the transmission lines of up to three kilometres for power supply to the substation was finalised last week and work order to the selected firm will be issued soon. The substation construction will cost approximately ₹65 crores and at least ₹25 crore additional would be spent on laying transmission lines for powering it up.

BK Raghava, HVPNL superintendent engineer, Gurugram, said that the most important factor is that this new substation is coming as a replacement for the one in Sector 77 which has been lying defunct for more than five years due to litigation over compensation awarded for land acquisition on which villagers were dissatisfied.

“That station was supposed to strengthen the power supply in areas of sectors 69, 70, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79 and sectors 81 to 95 along the three crucial roads in which large-scale residential projects of townships, societies and business parks are coming up fast. Thus, a decision was taken to build a substation at Sector 75 on priority,” said Raghava.

HVPNL officials said that a three-acre land parcel was allotted to them by Haryana Shehri Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP) at Sector 75 in 2016.

A senior official said that the upcoming Sector 75 substation will be connected with the two 400kV substations at Sakatpur, Sohna and another at Panchgaon.

“We already have transmission lines from these two high-capacity substations laid up to the defunct Sector 77 substation. It only needs to be further extended till the Sector 75 site,” he said.

“The time period to complete laying down the additional transmission line of 3kms is one year, while a 15-months deadline will be for the firm that will be selected for substation construction. We expect that it will be ready by mid 2027,” he said.

Meanwhile, HVPNL officials said that they have moved to the Supreme Court to allow them to lift equipment including transformers and control panels worth approximately ₹50 crore from the Sector 77 substation so that they could be used somewhere else.

“The equipment must be put to use somewhere as it’s the public money which was spent to purchase them,” said Raghava.

Officials said that the entire land parcel was acquired for ₹1.5 crore per acre but villagers had demanded more for which they had moved court in 2015.

In July 2019, a district court ordered for a compensation of ₹18.5 crore per acre to the villagers along with interest which brought the overall land acquisition cost to ₹682 crores, making an acre of ₹44 crore instead of ₹1.5 crore per acre which was finalised by the Haryana government.

The government later de-notified the entire acquisition and the villagers moved to Punjab and Haryana high court with the litigation still ongoing. HVPNL has kept deployed guards at the defunct station to safeguard the equipment lying there.

The Gurugram district had at least 51 HVPNL substations of which at least 16 are of 220kV capacity, 33 are of 66kV and one of 400 kV. There are three more 400kV substations in Sector 72, Sohna Road and Kadarpur which are run by private or central government owned entities.