Greening the Island Initiative:Interconnection of Islands in Andaman & Nicobar Islands and HVDC link from main land India

Energy (RE) generation. Islands are mostly dependent on diesel generators for meeting the electricity demand, which is a fossil fuel adding emissions to the environment. To make the energy supply of islands clean and environment friendly, efforts are being made in India in the form of Greening the Islands. This paper talks about one such initiative for the Andaman &

Nicobar Islands of India.

The Andaman & Nicobar Islands (ANI) is a Union Territory (UT) of India which comprises of two groups of islands namely the Andaman Islands and the Nicobar Islands. These are further grouped into three districts viz. North & Middle Andaman, South Andaman, and the Nicobar

Islands. Habitation is mainly concentrated in South, Middle and North Andaman Islands.

The ANI comprises of 19 inhabited islands having more than 3 lakh connected consumers of different types (Domestic, Industrial, Commercial) with present peak demand of about 70MW.

The islands are mainly dependent on diesel-generated (DG) power as their source of electricity.

Electrical network of ANI mainly comprises of 33kV and 11kV lines followed by Low Tension

(LT) feeders. Each island has its own generation and distribution system. To improve reliability and security of power supply in ANI, there is a need to integrate the isolated networks. The requirement had been from many years, which has now been addressed through the integrated transmission network discussed in this paper.

The demand of ANI is expected to reach about 99MW by 2029-30. Considering the geography of the islands, low demand projection, long distance between major demand centres, generation potentials of ANI, and to integrate various energy sources, it is prudent to provide hybrid solutions comprising Solar and Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) in association with existing DG/LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) sets along with a reliable and robust interconnection of islands. This would require establishment of a Medium Voltage (MV) network. Accordingly, a high capacity long distance 66 kV transmission network (High Capacity Power Transmission

Network Highway) (HCPTN Highway) interconnecting North, Middle & South Andaman has been planned to facilitate required exchange of power in a safe, secure and reliable manner which is already under implementation

Under Greening the Islands initiative, Govt. of India (GoI) aims at making ANI and

Lakshadweep Islands to utilise non-fossil fuel based/ clean energy sources including LNG for sustainable and environment friendly development. The present installed DG sets lead to emissions and its power is costly, which is subsidised by GoI to make it affordable for public and the subsidy runs into 60-70 Million US$ annually. The assessed Solar and Wind potential is limited towards meeting the growing needs of ANI and installation of largescale Solar or

Wind would severely affect the ecologically sensitive areas of ANI. Therefore, to meet the growing power demand in an environment friendly manner, a HVDC interconnection from mainland of India to ANI has been planned. To confirm the feasibility of HVDC interconnection, apart from technical and geo-technical aspects, economic analysis has also been carried out. This HVDC interconnection shall alleviate the requirement of running large scale DG sets in future years and contribute towards economical, sustainable and carbon free development of ANI.

Based on the technical studies and economic analysis (Rs./kWh and Net Present Value (NPV)),

GoI has already approved implementation of the planned 66kV HCPTN Highway and the

Paradeep – Andaman – Nicobar HVDC link. The HVDC link using submarine cable shall be a

Voltage Source Converter (VSC) based multi-terminal symmetric monopole link of 500MW capacity with 250MW terminals to be installed in first phase.

This paper discusses about the transmission planning aspects and associated challenges for development of a 66kV transmission corridor in ANI, and HVDC interconnection from mainland India to ANI. In addition to the technical analysis and power flow studies, cost estimation of the links and economic analysis were also carried out, which ought to be presented in this paper.