HYDERABAD/VISAKHAPATNAM: India’s largest floating solar power project became commercially operational on Saturday with state-run power generation giant NTPC Ltd commissioning its 25 MW floating solar plant at the Simhadri thermal power station in Visakhapatnam.
The project, set up under the Flexibilisation Scheme notified by the Centre in 2018, will not only help power around 7,000 households but will also prevent 46,000 tonnes of CO2 emission annually.
Set up at an investment of Rs 110 crore, it has 1,10,000 solar photovoltaic panels floating on 75 acres with a 165-acre reservoir. The installation has a unique anchoring design with the solar PV panels sitting atop floaters tied with the help of marine ropes to the edges of the reservoir.
NTPC officials say it is considered to be a rare engineering feat due to the challenges faced during the design and implementation of the anchoring and mooring system.
Project will save water
The project was executed by BHEL on an EPC basis in three phases. While the first phase saw 5MW being commissioned in March 2021, another 5MW was added and the 10MW project became commercially operational in end of June 2021.The remaining 15MW was commissioned on Saturday, marking the successful completion of the 25MW floating project that takes NTPC’s total commercial capacity to 65,850 MW and installed capacity to 66,900 MW.
The unique project is also expected to help save around 1,364 million litres of water per annum by preventing evaporation of water from the reservoir, which would be enough to meet the annual water requirements of around 6,700 households. The 2,000 MW coal-fired Simhadri power station was the first power project to implement an open sea intake from the Bay of Bengal when it was commissioned two decades ago.
.png?w=600)
