India’s largest floating solar plant to come up in Sagardighi

Kolkata: The West Bengal cabinet on Thursday approved a 5MW grid-connected floating

solar

project at Sagardighi Thermal Power Project (SgTPP) in Murshidabad. State power minister Sovondeb Chattopadhyay raised the issue at the cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Mamata Banerjee. It was later approved by the cabinet.

At a press conference, home secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay said: “This floating solar plant with 5MW capacity will be the largest of its kind in the country. Previously, there was one at Chittur near Tirupati that had a generation capacity of 4MW. The state government will have to spend Rs 22 crore for developing the plant. It will be able to provide electricity to more than 1 lakh households after becoming fully operational”.

Sources close to the development indicated that Covid pandemic could delay the completion. “The project was supposed to be completed in April 2020 but because of Covid, everything was put on hold. We can’t specify now the exact timeframe for project completion,” a senior power department official said.

West Bengal Power Development Corporation Limited (WBPDCL) will commission the plant that will have solar modules afloat on the Hydrolio floating platform, made by French company Ciel & Terre. The project is to be developed in raw water pond number 3 of SgTPP on a turnkey basis.

According to senior power department officials, Bengal is seriously considering alternative sources of power. “After this, WBPDCL will come up with another 5MW floating solar PV project for Santhaldih Thermal Power Station in Purulia district. This will open new avenues of power generation,” the official said.

Floating solar PV projects are slowly gaining traction in India. Over the past few months, a number of tenders for such projects have been issued. These include a 3MW project tendered by Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation set to be developed in the Meghadrigedda Reservoir in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Greater Visakhapatnam Smart City Corporation Limited too tendered a 2MW floating solar project in the Mudasarlova Reservoir, also in Visakhapatnam.

In December 2017, Solar Energy Corporation of India had invited expressions of interest to set up 10GW of floating solar PV projects in a phased manner over the following three years.


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