Mumbai : The Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (PGCIL), which earlier this week reported a 40 per cent rise in its Q3 net profit, has put in place a roadmap and an action plan that will take it to bigger opportunities in Africa and elsewhere as the central transmission utility looks to expand its revenue streams.
“For the last couple of months, I was setting up a road map. Now people have to venture out and perform in accordance with the action plan that is in place. It is time to do it now,” PGCIL Chairman and Managing Director R N Nayak told the Free Press Journal in an interview in Mumbai.
Nayak was in Mumbai for an analyst meet on Thursday, one day after he announced the Q3 numbers.
Nayak said transmission would remain the core business of the company and would grow faster but other businesses would grow, too. “Our other business is about five per cent. We want to increase that to 10-12 per cent and that is why you’ll see us being more aggressive,” Nayak said. PGCIL wheels 50 per cent of the total generated power in India. It has a cumulative inter-regional power transfer capacity of 28,000 MW.
“We will spread and expand beyond transmission in many areas, including international business. We are very aggressive in the international business,” Nayak said.
PGCIL recently won a contract from the Ethiopian Electric Power Corp., a vertically integrated company where the PGCIL-led consortium will place its people in key positions and manage the entire operations covering generation, transmission and distribution. The USD 16 million management consultancy project is reportedly for two years.
We are looking to take up similar work elsewhere because Africa is growing really fast and we are looking for bigger opportunities,” Nayak said.
He added: “Africa is a big new area and we expect it to work like India after liberalisation in 1991 and the growth we saw here. At Power Grid, we see sunrise opportunities there. The only caution is that we have to be pragmatic and share risk and protect yourself but the opportunity is huge.” Nayak said other PSUs were also looking to Africa but Power Grid has gone ahead of others, with studies and specification preparations already done so that the business can look for bigger contracts now.
The company is also looking for business opportunities in India.
Nayak said the roadmap for a wider growth canvas is a result of efforts over the last 18 months or so wherein the thinking has taken root that “in addition to transmission, we must take care of other areas of electricity – distribution, energy efficiency etc. because transmission is only one segment of the whole”. He said this would bring in more revenue and also offer scope for growth of the people at PGCIL.
We have already placed CEOs in joint venture companies, one of them in Nepal…these may be small companies but our people as CEOs have the operational freedom to take full charge and to deliver the results,” Nayak said. So our growth areas are not restricted to transmission, he added.
PGCIL is also looking to build in the area of smart grids, energy efficiency and intra state development and distribution.
The company has a dedicated cell and a pilot project in smart grid technology and it has also installed some 180 smart metres. A large scale deployment of smart metres will pave the way for smart operations under which consumers can switch on or switch off power to their homes remotely and distribution can cut off power supply remotely as well in case of non payment.
“We are working on advanced metering infrastructure and are also talking to various electricity boards and distribution companies to guide them to set up such systems,” the CMD said.
He said PGCIL also had a dedicated cell for energy efficiency. In distribution, the company has filed a license in Odisha for the “wire” business, under which PGCIL will only be an infrastructure provider.
