Power Plays: Fortifying India’s Energy Grid for Wartime Resilience

In an age of cyberwarfare and hybrid threats, India must rethink its electricity grid as a strategic defence asset.

A sprawling, humming web of pylons, substations and cables powers the world’s most populous nation. India’s electricity grid - one of the largest and fastest growing on the planet - is the backbone of its economic ambitions, from the bustling megacities of Mumbai and Bengaluru to the farmsteads of Punjab and the solar parks of Ladakh.

It fuels factories in the ‘Make in India’ initiative, irrigates fields and illuminates over 900 million lives daily. Yet, in a world where warfare has expanded from the battlefield into cyberspace, satellites and servers, this very lifeline is increasingly a liability.

India’s energy grid is as much a target as an asset. In a future war, its sheer scale and centralisation could make it vulnerable to hostile acts. Picture a coordinated cyberattack that shuts down load dispatch centres, or a missile strike that disables a key substation. The result would be blackouts across cities, disruption of military and emergency operations, paralysis of supply chains, and an erosion of public trust. Modern adversaries no longer need to invade; they only need to switch off the lights.

This is not the stuff of fiction. In 2015 and again in 2016, Ukraine suffered blackouts due to cyberattacks widely attributed to Russian state-sponsored hackers. In 2020, Mumbai experienced a massive grid failure, which reports linked to a suspected Chinese cyber incursion. Malware has been found inside Indian nuclear facilities.

The answer lies in fortification. India must begin to treat its energy infrastructure not merely as a civilian utility, but as a strategic, even military, asset. Resilience must become the new doctrine. That will require sweeping reform, substantial investment and an openness to rethink the very architecture of power delivery.

First, decentralisation must become a strategic imperative. Rather than relying predominantly on massive, centralised power plants and long-distance transmission lines, India must embrace a mosaic of distributed generation. Rooftop solar panels on millions of homes, community wind turbines in breezy coastal belts, and microgrids in remote villages can together create a web of redundancy. Distributed systems are also easier to protect and quicker to repair.

Second, India must harness its abundance of renewable energy not just for climate reasons, but for national security. Solar and wind, unlike coal or imported gas, cannot be blockaded or embargoed. Solar photovoltaic systems coupled with advanced battery storage should become standard in critical infrastructure from hospitals and airports to military installations and communication centres. These ‘islandable’ systems must be capable of operating independently when the main grid fails, ensuring continuity of vital services.

Third, key components of the existing grid must be hardened. Substations, transformers and load control centres should be housed in reinforced, blast-resistant structures. Equipment must be duplicated wherever possible. Drawing lessons from countries like Israel and South Korea, India could build ‘energy bunkers’ around its most essential nodes. These physical barriers can buy crucial time in the event of attack, enough to prevent cascading failures.

Fourth, the national grid itself must become more flexible and better interconnected. High-voltage direct current (HVDC) lines, already being deployed, should be expanded to allow power to flow seamlessly across regions. This enables unaffected areas to support those in crisis. Advanced grid management software, powered by artificial intelligence, can optimise load flows in real time, detect anomalies and isolate damaged sections automatically.

Fifth, India needs boots on the ground in form of a dedicated national task force for rapid power restoration. This elite ‘energy SWAT team’ must be trained to deploy at a moment’s notice, with tools and technologies to identify faults, replace damaged components and get electricity flowing again within hours, not days. Their work must be tightly integrated with disaster management agencies, the military and intelligence services.

Most critically, the digital realm must be secured. The grid’s control systems are alarmingly susceptible to cyber infiltration. India must invest in modernising Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, deploying AI-driven threat detection, segmenting networks to prevent lateral movement by attackers, and mandating end-to-end encryption across all grid communications. A centralised Cyber Command, working in tandem with the Ministry of Power and National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), must be empowered to monitor, pre-empt, and neutralise digital threats.

India would also do well to consider electromagnetic pulse (EMP) protection. EMP weapons, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, can disable electronics over wide areas. Shielding critical components and creating EMP-resilient redundancies is a prudent insurance policy in an increasingly unstable world.

A nation that aspires to be a global power cannot afford to be plunged into darkness by a few keystrokes or missiles. The energy system must be seen not just as infrastructure, but as infrastructure for deterrence.

The government has made encouraging noises. Initiatives such as Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS) and the Green Energy Corridor are steps in the right direction. But more is needed. A national mission on grid resilience, with clear milestones, multi-sector collaboration and a war-gaming approach to testing vulnerabilities, should be launched without delay.

As India electrifies its economy and digitises its society, it must not forget that power, in every sense of the word, is about control. To lose control of the grid is to lose the nation’s pulse. The next war may not begin with a bang but with a blackout. India must be ready.

(The writer is a digital product leader passionate about energy innovation, manufacturing and driving impact through technology. Views personal)