The Singareni Collieries Company Limited today commissioned a 37 MW solar photovoltaic power plant at Kothagudem in the coal belt to take the total solar installations by the company past the 200 MW mark.

Singareni Collieries Directors N. Balaram and D.Satyanarayana Rao inaugurated the solar plants.

This is part of the State-owned coal mining company plan to set up 13 plants with a total installed capacity of 300 MWs across eight coal mining areas of Singareni.

The erection of these plants is to be completed in three phases. In the first phase, BHEL was handed over a contract to develop solar power plants in four areas with 129 MW.

Adani Construction Company was given the contract to complete four plants in three areas with a capacity of 90 MW. Of this, 37 MW at Kothagudem, 28 MW at Mandamarri-A block, 15 MW at Mandamarri-B block and 10 MW at Bhupalapalli have been completed. With this, the total solar installed capacity has crossed the 200 MW mark to reach 209 MW.

Thus far, 122.3 million units of solar power as of September 21 has been generated by the solar plants connected to the grid and is being supplied in the Singareni areas. This has helped Singareni save ₹75 crore as on date.

When all of the 300 MW power generation is installed, Singareni expects to save ₹120 crore per year.

The erection of 81 MW solar capacity has been handed over to Adani and Novas group and is likely to be completed by the year-end.

Novas group has already started the erection of a 15 MW floating power plant on the reservoir in the Singareni thermal power plant premises.

Adani group has taken up erection of 22 megawatts plant on RG-3 open cast dump, 10 megawatts on Dorli open cast dump and 34 megawatts at Kothagudem&Chennuru.

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