A floating Power Plant in India
In a boost to the solar Industry in India, the nation’s biggest floating power plant will become operational in Telangana state . The facility has a capacity of 100 megawatt and is being setup by the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) in their reservoir of thermal power plant in Ramagundam, which is located in the Peddapalli district.
The facility, which is a photovoltaic project, will be spread across 450 acres of land and will consist of over 4 lakh photovoltaic plates. The project costs around 423 crores and will be the biggest floating solar plant in the nation. The NTPC has plans for solar power plants of up to a total capacity of 450 MW in the South India and out of these 217 MW plants will be floating on water bodies. They plan a 92 MW floating plant in the Kayamkulam district of Kerala as well in the future.
Previously they had test projects setup in Kayamkulam and Kawas which is located in Kerala and Gujarat respectively. The projects were of 100KWH and 1 KWH. The officials have revealed that these projects are as a part of Nations target to attain 175 GW of renewable energy by 2022 which also includes 100 GW of solar energy capacity. All the upcoming projects located in south India will come into effect in another few months of time. There was a delay in these projects due to the covid 19 pandemic which struck India last year and is still ongoing.
These plants are constructed on water bodies where the photovoltaic plates float on them and is a suitable alternate to the land-based ones as they consume a lot of space.
Photovoltaic plates are the plates that consist the photovoltaic cells which absorb sunlight and turn them into electricity which we use. These cells are made up of semiconducting materials such as silicon which can directly convert sunlight into electricity. These floating plants are usually set up on reservoirs and other huge water bodies which can accommodate a lot of them. There are many large waterbodies located In South India which makes it an ideal place for them to set up these plants.
An added advantage of this other than the availability of space is water acts as a natural cooler which improves the life of these cells thereby getting the most out of them.
Image credit: jackson.com
Add Comment