Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd intends to set up a 5 MW solar power plant in its boiler auxiliary plant complex at Ranipet near Chennai.
The public sector power equipment major is setting up the plant for captive consumption of electricity the plant would produce, an official of BHEL said here today.
The official disclosed this while answering a question of K. Venugopal, Member, Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission, at an interaction organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry for spreading awareness on REC/RPO mechanism.
He wanted to know whether the solar plant would be eligible for both ‘renewable energy certificates’ and carbon credits. (It was clarified that it is.)
At Ranipet, BHEL has a sprawling complex of 163 acres. A 5 MW photo voltaic solar plant, based on crystalline silicon technology, would need about 25 acres. Land, therefore, is no issue for BHEL.
BHEL itself manufactures PV modules at its plant in Bangalore. It produces both mono and poly silicon-based cells and modules from wafers bought (mostly) from Japan.
With the main inputs — land and key equipment — available inhouse, BHEL believes it would be able to put up the plant in quick time, in order that it is able to reduce its dependence on diesel-based power that it uses, whenever grid power is not available — which is for 6-8 hours a day.
Under the extant rules of the REC mechanism, an entity that puts up a solar (or renewable energy based) plant and itself consumes the energy, it is still eligible to get trade-able renewable energy certificates.
Typically, a 1 MW solar PV plant could yield between 15-18 lakh units a year.
Keywords: Bharat Heavy Electricals, BHEL, solar power plant, boiler auxiliary plant complex at Ranipet, renewable energy certificates, carbon credits, photo voltaic solar plant, trade-able renewable energy certificates., REC mechanism,
Comments:
Let us figure it out in lay man's terms: We need 5 acres of roof top
space per MW. This works out to 242,000 sq ft per MW approximately.
Assuming each multi storeyed block in Chennai can "spare" 2000 sq ft
of roof space, we need approximately 1000 multi storeyed houses to
come together to set up 1MW of capacity. This is way below the
expected demand from all the flats that the 1000 blocks normally
houses, say for the 8000 flats. No doubt "some power s better than no
power" and so we should encourage these, but on a practical scale this
is unlikely to take off in Chennai's residential areas.
A correction please :
................we need approximately 100 multi storeyed houses to
come together to set up 1MW of capacity. This is way below the
expected demand from all the flats that the 100 blocks normally
houses, say for the 800 flats..................
Regret typo
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