Sandeep Zanzaria has more than three decades of experience in the power sector. He worked at BHEL for 14 years, in various fields including commissioning, project management and engineering. Later, he took up roles at Alstom T&D and Schneider Electric. Zanzaria joined the GE Grid Solutions business for South Asia as regional commercial leader in 2017, and was responsible for commercial strategy and order intake for the region. In his current role as strategy and growth officer for GE Grid Solutions for Asia Pacific, he is responsible for driving the strategy growth objectives.
On the current state of the power sector, Zanzaria believes that looking at the growth India is anticipating (7-8 per cent), the power sector will grow in a big way. “The country has put in place an ambitious plan of reaching an installed renewables capacity of 500 GW by 2030. Given this, the sector is poised for huge growth in the coming years. It is going to be the sunshine sector for the country in the next 10-15 years,” he notes.
According to him, the key challenges that hinder growth in the sector are project delays due to land-related issues in transmission, and timely closure of financing for renewable energy projects. The dependence on imports for various raw materials is another bottleneck that hampers growth in the sector. Technically, with the addition of renewables in the generation mix, there will be issues related to availability of round-the-clock power and the grid will become more complex. This will drive initiatives such as digitalisation and adoption of advanced technologies.
In terms of sector outlook, Zanzaria remarks, “We are quite upbeat about the outlook for the sector.” He highlights that the thrust on tariff-based competitive bidding projects is back and, as per the Government of India’s report on the transmission system for the integration of renewables by 2030, huge investments are expected in the sector by 2030. Such growth prospects will offer immense opportunities for equipment manufacturers. “As a key technology provider, GE will play a key role in enabling the energy transition in the country,” he says.
Zanzaria graduated from the Maulana Azad College of Technology (now named National Institute of Technology), Bhopal. He has been a member of the national executive council of IEEMA for the past two years and has been actively involved with the IEEMA project division for more than a decade.