EMPOWERTRANS’s association with POWERGRID had originated with the very active roles it had taken during the power evacuation projects it had executed for Independent Power Producers (as mentioned elsewhere under MAJOR MILESTONES). That process had enabled EMPOWERTRANS in taking up the role of co-ordinating the finer aspects of grid connectivity for the associated transmission lines, which it itself was building for various customers.

However, the formal association with POWERGRID came through the award of simultaneous multi-locational bay extension projects that the latter awarded to EMPOWERTRANS, selecting it from amongst a host of large corporates who had also been keen to bag the projects, in keeping with POWERGRID’s tradition of encouraging and developing new entrants for execution of its power line projects.

These 400 / 760 KV Bay Extension projects of PGCIL were spread across 3 states and located at Chaibasa and Ranchi in Jharkhand; Muzaffarpur in Bihar; and Fatehpur in Uttar Pradesh. The acquisition for execution of these projects and their commissioning before the scheduled contractual dates must surely be counted as one of the most creditable forays of EMPOWERTRANS in the Substation segment, and that too for the largest Central Transmission Utility (CTU).

The successful and ahead of time commissioning of these projects by this new entrant to the PGCIL Pool, was much talked of and discussed within PGCIL in its house circles, and indeed PGCIL stood vindicated in its constant endeavour of identifying and developing new and capable vendors for its projects all over the country.

That EMPOWERTRANS had indeed arrived on the forefront of the Transmission- Distribution scene at a national level was highlighted through another bay extension project in Bihar and subsequently, the very prestigious order for the restoration, redesigning of the cyclone affected Puri Line, described in one of the other MAJOR MILESTONES in this section.