Hitachi and Adani switch on HVDC city center infeed for more than 20 million people in Mumbai

Zurich, April 13, 2026 - Hitachi Energy, a global technology leader in electrification, and Adani Energy Solutions Ltd. (AESL), India’s largest private sector power transmission and distribution company, have successfully commissioned one of the world’s largest high-voltage direct current (HVDC) city center infeed in Mumbai, increasing power supply coming from outside the city by 50 percent.

Injecting up to 1,000 megawatts (MW) of reliable, secure, and clean power directly into one of the world’s most densely populated megacities, the new HVDC link delivers a step-change in Mumbai’s energy resilience. The Kudus-Aarey connection significantly strengthens the city’s transmission infrastructure, supporting the daily needs of more than 20 million people.

Powered by Hitachi Energy’s Voltage Source Converter (VSC) HVDC technology, the link delivers precise, fast control of power flow, improved voltage stability, and enhanced grid reliability in a city where space is scarce. The Aarey converter station upgrade marks the city’s most significant grid modernization in nearly 25 years, boosting the grid capacity from 250 to 1,000 megawatts (MW) and directly reinforcing the city’s energy stability and resilience thus ensuring energy security.

Delivering this milestone project in the heart of a busy megacity demanded exceptional execution capability. Building a major transmission interface within tight urban constraints required precise coordination of construction and logistics, a challenge intensified by Mumbai’s monsoon seasons. The converter station was engineered with an extremely compact footprint and supplied through a configuration combining overhead lines and underground HVDC cables, which freed approximately 2 square kilometers of urban territory - equivalent to approximately 280 football fields¹ or more than 100 cricket fields².

The project is supplied through the Kudus grid connection with power imported from outside the city, including renewable energy from generation regions of Maharashtra and renewable-rich nodes across India’s national grid. With its compact footprint, ability to transmit power through underground cables in constrained corridors, and inherent advantages in managing power congestion, pollution, acoustical and electrical noise, power quality, and control, the in-city HVDC application provides a scalable model for other Indian cities and global megacities facing similar multiplying power demand as well as land permitting and grid integration challenges.

Hitachi Energy has an impressive HVDC track record in India, where it introduced the HVDC technology with the Rihand-Dadri HVDC transmission system in 1990. The company is currently executing several of India’s most transformative renewable energy transmission corridors, such as the 950-km, 6,000 MW HVDC connection from the renewable energy zone in Bhadla/Rajasthan to Fatehpur/UP, the 1,200-km, 6,000 MW link from Khavda to Nagpur. To support the execution of these and other projects worldwide, in 2023, Hitachi Energy inaugurated an advanced power electronics factory in Chennai to enhance the local production capacity of pioneering HVDC and power quality solutions. Together, these developments reaffirm Hitachi Energy’s role as a long-term technology partner in building India’s grid of the future.