The Bharat Electronics Limited of the Ministry of Defence will run the country’s largest Advanced Night Vision Products Factory coming up at Nimmaluru in Krishna district through solar power.
A 2 MW solar power plant is to come up on the 50-acre campus at Nimmaluru at a cost of Rs.15 crore as part of utilising renewable energy sources to run the unit. The decision to set up the plant was approved during the energy conservation meet in October.
In September, Union Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu laid the foundation for the Rs.200-crore factory project.
The Nimmaluru unit is the 10th unit of the BEL.
A report on the Energy Conservation Meet, accessed by The Hindu , confirms that 9,24,654 Kilowatt hours (KWHrs) of electrical energy was consumed to run the Machilipatnam unit till August 2016 during the 2016-17 financial year.
The Kilowatt hour is a derived unit of energy equivalent to 3.6 megajoules.
However, the electrical energy used to run the same unit in 2015-16 was 89,5975 KWHrs.
The BEL meets the electrical energy from in-house power generation and other sources.
March 2018 deadline
It aims at commissioning the Nimmaluru unit by March 2018 and targets to provide nearly 200 jobs.
The Passive Night Weapon Sight for INSAS/LMG/AK 47 and Passive Night Vision Binoculars and other opto-electronic devices would be produced at Nimmaluru.
Sri Lanka, Sudan, Israel and some African nations are the major buyers of opto-electronic products produced by BEL.
Source:thehindu
