Bengaluru Power Network Gets Long Awaited Clearance
Bengaluru’s strained electricity backbone serving its eastern technology corridor is set for a critical upgrade after the State Board for Wildlife cleared a long-stalled transmission modernisation project that intersects with a protected forest zone. The decision removes a key regulatory bottleneck for replacing ageing high-voltage infrastructure that underpins power supply to some of the city’s fastest-growing employment and residential districts, with implications for grid stability, investment confidence, and urban resilience. The project centres on upgrading a 400kV transmission corridor that has functioned for over four decades as a strategic link within southern India’s interconnected power network. Originally designed for far lower urban density, the line now feeds substations supporting large technology campuses, data centres, industrial clusters, and expanding housing zones across east Bengaluru.
Energy planners say sustained overload conditions have increased the risk of voltage instability and cascading failures across the city’s transmission network. According to officials involved in the planning process, the infrastructure upgrade focuses on replacing deteriorated conductors and modernising transmission towers along a roughly 10-kilometre stretch. While most of the corridor lies within urbanised land, two tower locations fall inside a notified national park, triggering mandatory wildlife clearances and prolonged scrutiny from conservation authorities. Environmental concerns, particularly around elephant movement and habitat disturbance, had earlier delayed approvals. In response, transmission planners redesigned the project to avoid fresh forest land acquisition, retain existing tower locations, and raise conductor heights well above standard safety clearances. The revised configuration also reduces the width of the transmission corridor, limiting vegetation removal and surface disruption within the forest boundary.
Urban infrastructure experts note that the clearance reflects a growing trend of integrating mitigation measures into essential city-serving projects rather than rerouting them entirely. “As cities densify, legacy infrastructure increasingly overlaps with sensitive ecological zones. The solution lies in design-led risk reduction, not indefinite delays,” said an urban energy specialist familiar with similar projects. The Bengaluru power transmission upgrade is expected to significantly improve supply reliability to high-demand zones that collectively consume several thousand megawatts daily. For the city’s technology-driven economy, uninterrupted and quality power has become as critical as transport access or digital connectivity, especially as firms expand operations and adopt energy-intensive computing systems.
From a governance perspective, the project also underscores the challenge of balancing infrastructure renewal with biodiversity protection in rapidly expanding metros. Officials say the proposal will now move to the national wildlife authority for final concurrence, subject to compliance monitoring and post-construction safeguards. As Bengaluru prepares for another decade of growth, the episode highlights the importance of proactive infrastructure planning that anticipates urban expansion while embedding environmental risk management into project design a prerequisite for building climate-resilient and investment-ready cities.
