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State-run NTPC on Friday announced the date of commercial operations of the final 20 MW of the 100 MW Ramagundam floating solar PV project, which is the largest such project in India.
With this the 100 MW Ramagundam floating solar PV project in Telangana is declared to be in Commercial Operation with effect from July 1, 2022, the country’s largest power generator said in a statement.
With the operationalisation of the solar project at Ramagundam, the total commercial operations of floating solar capacity in the Southern Region rose to 217 MW. Earlier, NTPC declared commercial operation of 92 MW floating solar at Kayamkulam (Kerala) and 25 MW floating solar at Simhadri (Andhra Pradesh), NTPC’s Regional Executive Director (South) Naresh Anand said.
Ramagundam project
Constructed at a cost of ₹423 crore through state-run BHEL as theengineering, procurement and construction contractor, the project covers more than 500 acres of the reservoir, it added.
Each block of 2.5 MW, totalling 40 blocks, consists of one floating platform and an array of 11,200 solar modules. The floating platform consists of one inverter, transformer, and a HT breaker. The solar modules are placed on High Density Polyethylene floats.
The entire floating system is being anchored through special High Modulus Polyethylene rope to dead weights placed in the balancing reservoir bed. The power is being evacuated up to the existing switch yard through 33KV underground cables.
This project is unique in the sense that all the electrical equipment including inverter, transformer, HT panel and SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) are also on floating ferro cement platforms anchoring through dead weight concrete blocks.
From the environment point of view, the most obvious advantage is minimum land requirement mostly for associated evacuation arrangements. Further, with the presence of floating solar panels, the evaporation rate from water bodies is reduced, thus helping in water conservation.
Around 32.5 lakh cubic meters of water evaporation can be avoided annually. The water body underneath the solar modules helps in maintaining their ambient temperature, thereby improving their efficiency and generation. Similarly, 1.65 lakh tonnes of coal consumption and 2.10 lakh tonnes of CO2 emissions can be avoided annually.
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