On October 2, 2018, Prime Minister Modi proposed the 'one world, one sun, one grid' initiative aimed at creating a global electricity grid that connects continents. The project, supported by Sterlite Power's idea for an intercontinental electricity grid linking Asia and Africa, aims to address energy inequality and execute infrastructure comparable to China's One Belt One Road initiative. With only 43% of Sub-Saharan Africa having electricity access, significant investment and demand growth are critical for this ambitious project to succeed.

1. ONE WORLD ONE SUN ONE GRID

3. • On 2nd October 2018, Prime Minister Modi announced a
grand vision of creating the "one world, one sun, one grid"
network. This mega project, once completed, will create a
massive single grid network that will power every continent
through day and night by transferring the power of the
afternoon sun almost instantaneously to any part of the world.
Sterlite Power echoed this vision with an idea championing the
development of the IEG (Intercontinental Electricity Grid) that
proposed a connector between Asia and Africa using a
submarine HVDC network. The proposed connector offers a
practical, simple yet challenging & futuristic solution to bring
this vision to life.

4. • Kerala’s legendary Muziris port, heart of the Spice Route, vanished off the
grid 3,000 years ago. It was once an established spice trade centre which
enabled pepper from the vines of Malabar to find its way to Egypt, the
transcontinental Asian-African country. This trade route coexisted with
China’s Silk Road, trading routes established during the Han Dynasty, which
linked regions of the ancient world in commerce. The spice and silk routes
enabled India and China to become formidable powers of the time. That
was then. Fast forward to the twenty first century. In 2017, China
launched its modern reprise of the Silk Road trading route — the One Belt
One Road (OBOR) initiative: a grand infrastructure project to connect nearly
70 countries across three to four continents by building a massive network
of roads, ports, railways, bridges and gas pipelines using the ancient Silk
Road blueprint.

5. • OBOR underscores China’s ambition to create
a dominant geopolitical position in Asia leveraging
its infrastructural heft. It is now India’s turn to reprise
the Spice Route with an intercontinental electricity
grid (IEG), a super intercontinental power grid
connecting India and Africa. It would be a
monumental project aimed at smoothening out the
inequality of power generation and demand. Indeed,
a grand project with as much infrastructural heft as
OBOR.

6. • According to the World Energy Outlook Report 2017,
only 43 per cent of the population in sub-Saharan
Africa has access to electricity. The African
governments are working closely to
improve their installed capacity to 253 GW by
2030 but that requires huge investment. Besides, it
does not solve the demand problem – if proportional
electricity demand does not go up as anticipated,
that massive investment would come to naught.

7. Thank You
https://www.sterlitepower.com/news/detail/developing-
intercontinental-electricity-grid-between-india-and-africa