Telangana is floating solar parks on water to get around land acquisition challenges – EQ Mag Pro

Experts say that while floating solar parks offer more production ability, there are greater maintenance costs after operationalisation.

Ramagundam in the Peddapalli district of Telangana has a unique landscape. The Godavari river flows on one side of the city and lush green hillocks add to the natural beauty. In contrast, the vertical blast furnaces of the power plants here hint towards the rapid industrialisation in the area.

Being one of the important power generation centres of National Thermal Power Corporation in South India, tall electricity towers are omnipresent, spanning from the agricultural fields to the roadsides and to the nearby hilly terrains. The area comes under the Godavari Valley Coalfields, the only coalfield of South India. Here coal is mined and processed to create thermal energy to cater to the needs of the state.

However, the region, besides being known for its coal mining reserve and thermal power generation centre, was in the limelight last year when the National Thermal Power Corporation announced one of India’s largest 100 megawatts floating solar parks (at a single location) on its premises at Ramagundam. Floating solar photovoltaic plants are renewable energy generation plants where solar panels are mounted on a structure on a water body. Floating solar or floating photovoltaics are also called “floatovoltaics”.

“The floating solar park at Ramagundam is spread over 450 acres of water body on a water reservoir. Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited has been the executive agency for the project, estimated at a cost of Rs 423 crores. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the project suffered some delays but is likely to be completed by the end of the year,” a senior official from the National Thermal Power Corporation-Ramagundam plant told Mongabay-India.

Floating solar park

The floating solar park is situated around 7-km away from the Godavari river. Around 40 different arrays in the plant host around 4.7 lakh solar panels to produce 100 megawatts of clean energy. Transformers, inverters and switchgear panels have been installed in the floating structure anchored on the water body. However, the site is away from public view as it comes under the jurisdiction plant area of the National Thermal Power Corporation.Read More…

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