India willing to export electricity to Pakistan

Sources say it will only take a few months to build the transmission line, for power to start flowing.

NEW DELHI, INDIA: India is ready to help Pakistan alleviate its energy crisis by setting up a power transmission line across the border, sources in the Indian Enery Ministry said.

Pakistan, which already purchases electricity from Iran, has sought to purchase power to alleviate some of the acute energy crisis it is currently facing and has sought the supply of 500 Mega Watts of power from its Eastern neighbour.

As part of this, a delegation from the Indian Power Ministry, led by Joint Secretary Rita Acharya visited Pakistan earlier this week. They discussed the broad contours of the proposed arrangement and explored points which can be used to hook-up to the grid in Pakistan through a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) line. However, details and modalities of the purchase and the techno-commercial as well as sovereign arrangements still need to be worked out.

Sources said the transmission line may not take very long to build and power could start flowing in matter of months, even though India will have to build a transmission network at its end and transmission lines for power transmission may need to be developed. A formal timeline was not offered.

However, they said that the main obstacle remained building a political will around the move.

India has an installed capacity of over 2,11,000 MW plans to add another 88,000 MW electricity by March, 2017.