India’s largest floating solar power plant to be commissioned by NTPC in May

The NTPC southern region has taken up setting up of solar power plants of the total capacity of 450 MW. Of this, 217 MW plants would be floating on water bodies.

India’s largest floating solar power plant of 100 MW capacity, belonging to the National Thermal Power Corporation, is expected to be commissioned at Ramagundam in May this year, NTPC southern region executive director CV Anand said on Wednesday.

The country's largest floating solar power plant of 100 MW capacity is expected to be commissioned at Ramagundam by the National Thermal Power Corporation in May this year, (HT PHOTO).

Addressing a virtual press conference in Hyderabad, Anand said the floating solar photo-voltaic project would be spread over 450 acres on the water surface of Sri Ram Sagar Project reservoir. This will be the largest floating solar plant in the country in a single location as of now. The total cost of the project would be ₹423 crore, including GST, he said.

“NTPC is utilising the water bodies and huge reservoirs to set up these floating solar units, because it requires huge expenditure for ground-mounted plant. For setting up one MW solar photo-voltaic plant on ground, we require five acres,” he said.

The NTPC has successfully completed pilot projects at Kayamkulam (100 KWH) capacity and Kawas (1 MW). “Now, we are implementing large floating solar plants,” the executive director said.

“We are actually slightly delayed in implementing these floating solar projects due to the Coronavirus pandemic,” Anand said.

Regarding other solar power projects of the NTPC southern region, he said a 5 MW solar plant was set up at Port Blair Solar in Andaman & Nicobar Islands on March 30, 2012, that catered to the power needs of the Union territory; a 10 MW solar plant was commissioned at Ramagundam December 31, 2013 and the phase I- of the 250 MW (5X50 MW) Ultra Mega solar project was commissioned at N P Kunta village of Anantapur district in Andhra.

In addition, the NTPC is setting up a 230 MW ground mounted solar power plant in Ettayapuram near Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu by next year. On an average, the cost of setting up solar plant is around ₹4 crore per MW, he said.

Explaining about other ventures of the NTPC southern region, the executive director said it was in the process of commissioning 2x800 MW coal fired thermal power project at Ramgundam in Telangana. The phase I unit of 800 MW will be commissioned by January 2022 and the phase II of 800 MW by March 2022.

NTPC Southern region has total installed capacity of about 9,125 MW, out of the corporation’s total capacity of 64,880 MW in the country.