This is India's largest ever floating solar power plant...and it's located in none other than god's own country - Kerala! Built on the Banasura Sagar reservoir in Wayanad, the floating solar power plant is a breathtaking sight! Interestingly, earlier this year, China had commissioned the world's largest floating solar power plant. As India looks to up its focus on renewable energy, the setting up of multiple solar power plants across the country will come as a definite boost. We take a look at some interesting facts about India's largest, and indeed picturesque, solar power plant:
The Kerala State Electricity Board's (KSEB) floating solar power plant has been built at an approximate cost of Rs 9.25 crore. The work on this project commenced in March 2016.
Floating on 6,000 square metres of water surface of the reservoir, the solar power plant is of 500 kWp (kilowatt peak).
Reports suggest that through this solar power plant as many as 7.5 lakh units of power will be annually fed to the KSEB grid. This will be done using underwater cables.
A Thiruvananthapuram-based private company, Adtech Systems Ltd, is the agency behind the implementation of this project.
The power produced with the help of this floating solar plant will be transmitted to a 11-kV line of KSEB.
The solar photo voltaic panels, of the floating plant, have been installed on 18 floating platforms. These platforms are made of ferrocement floaters with hollow insides.
The 54,450 square feet floating solar power plant has almost 2,000 solar panels. Each solar panel is said to have a capacity of 260 Watts. This 500kWp floating solar power plant project is actually a scaled up version of the 10kW floating solar project which had been commissioned in January 2016.
"This is an innovative project by the Kerala state government. We are giving importance to roof top solar plants as well. Not only solar, in the coming days there will also be focus on setting up wind energy plants," J Mohammed Siyad. Chief PRO of KSEB tells FE Online. According to Siyad, the state government is looking at a "tradeoff between all sources of power generation."
