Largest floating solar plant to boost Kerala State Electricity Board power grid
KALPETTA: Power minister M M Mani dedicated the largest floating solar plant of the country on Monday at a function held at Banasurasagar Dam premises at Padinjarethara near here. Addressing the gathering Mr Mani said that completion of such innovative projects helped the state to tide over the shortage in power supply and avoid power-cuts. “The state would be free from power cuts this year too”, he added. On the project Mr Mani said that it is an experimental as well as expensive project. “The government would explore all possible ways to generate maximum electricity”, he added. On the need to generate more power Mr Mani said that the power generation of the state is merely 30 percent whereas we buy 70 percent from other agencies.
District panchayat president V Ushakumari presided over the function. Director (corporate planning) N Venugopal, chief engineer (renewable energy) VK Joseph and chief engineer (power generation) Brijilal V also spoke. The 500 kilowatt peak solar power plant of the KSEB is spread over 6,000 square metres of water surface of the reservoir. Commissioned on a cost of Rs 9.29 crore, the solar farm has 1938 photo voltaic panels with transformer and 17 inverters. The farm is afloat on 18 platforms made of hollow ferrocement. Started in March 2016, the plant is expected to generate 7.5 lakh units of power annually which will be connected directly to KSEB grid through underwater cables.
A floating substation also was set up on the reservoir to convert the output into 11kV standards. The floating solar plants had higher efficiency compared to ground-mounted installations, it was pointed out. The project is a scaled up version of the 10kW floating solar project which was commissioned earlier in Banasura Sagar reservoir in January 2016. It was a trial which proved a success inspiring the KSEB to go for a real mega project, it was pointed out. The plant was set up by the Thiruvananthapuram based Adtech Systems Ltd.
