Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
NTPC commissions 100 MW Floating Solar Power Project, India’s largest floating solar power project in Telangana

The largest floating Solar Power Project of India is now fully operational. National Thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC) declared Commercial Operation of the final part capacity of 20 megawatt out of 100 MW Ramagundam Floating Solar Photovoltaic Project at Ramagundam, Telangana from 1 July 2022.

Total commercial operation of Floating Solar Capacity in the Southern Region rose to 217 MW with the operationalisation of the 100-MW Solar Photovoltaic Project at Ramagundam. 

Prior to this, NTPC declared Commercial operation of 92 MW Floating Solar at Kayamkulam, Kerala and 25 MW Floating Solar at Simhadri in Andhra Pradesh.

The 100-MW Floating Solar project at Ramagundam is provided with advanced technology as well as environment friendly features. It is constructed with financial implication of Rs. 423 crores through M/s BHEL as EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) contract. The project spreads over 500 acres of its reservoir. It is divided into 40 blocks, each having 2.5 MW.  Each block consists of one floating platform and an array of 11,200 solar modules. The floating platform consists of one inverter, transformer, and a High voltage circuit breaker. The solar modules are placed on floaters manufactured with High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) material.

The entire floating system is being anchored through special HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) rope to the dead weights placed in the balancing reservoir bed. The power is being evacuated up to the existing switch yard through 33KV underground cables.  This project is unique in the sense that all the electrical equipment including inverter, transformer, HT panel and SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) are also on floating ferro cement platforms. The anchoring of this system is bottom anchoring through dead weight concrete blocks.

From an environmental point of view, the most obvious advantage is minimum land requirement mostly for associated evacuation arrangements. Further, with the presence of floating solar panels, the evaporation rate from water bodies is reduced, thus helping in water conservation. Approximately 32.5 lakh cubic meters per year of water evaporation can be avoided. The water body underneath the solar modules helps in maintaining their ambient temperature, thereby improving their efficiency and generation. Similarly, coal consumption of 1,65,000 tons can be avoided per year and CO2 emission of 2,10,000 tons per year can be avoided.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *