Power Grid Corporation Of India Ltd.

In a bid to improve safety and security in the possibility of natural disasters or sabotages, Power Grid Corporation of India (PGCIL) is planning to deploy helicopters for aerial patrolling of electricity transmission lines.

Power Grid runs five electricity grids in Northern, Eastern, North Eastern, Southern and Western in the country. Though, the plan has been under consideration for quite some time but the failure of power grids for two straight days last month that impacted more than half of country’s population has necessitated the measure.

The company was operating about 92,981 circuit kilometres (kms) of inter-state transmission lines as on March 31, 2012. One circuit km refers to one km of electrical transmission line. PGCIL is India’s principal electric power transmission company. It owns and operates most of India’s interstate and inter-regional electric power transmission systems with inter-regional power transfer capacity of about 20,800 MW and wheels nearly 45% of total power generated across India.