It was indeed a proud day for India, as keeping up with its commitment to reduce carbon footprint, the country’s largest floating Solar Power Project has become fully operational.
The public sector undertaking National Thermal Power Corporation declared the commercial operation of the final part capacity of 20 MW out of 100 MW Ramagundam Floating Solar PV Project located at Telangana from July 1.
With this the total commercial operation of floating solar capacity in the south has gone up to 217 MW. Before this NTPC had started operating the 92 MW project at Kayamkulam in Kerala and the 25 one at Andhra Pradesh’s Simhadri.
The Ramagundam project has environment-friendly attributes while it boasts of advanced technology and has been built by Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited at a cost of Rs.423 crore. The project is divided into 40 blocks, each having 2.5 MW. Every block has one floating platform which has one inverter, transformer and a HT breaker and 11,200 solar modules.
The complete system is anchored through High Modulus Polyethylene rope to the dead weights placed in the balancing reservoir bed.
These floating systems are beneficial for the environment as hardly any land is used for them while their presence reduces the evaporation rate from water bodies. Around 32.5 lakh cubic meters per year water evaporation can be avoided. It helps in reducing coal consumption for production of electricity by 1,65,000 tonnes thus reducing emission of carbon dioxide.
