Delhi: Delhi Metro will soon be one of the most sustainable modes of transport in the country. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) will soon switch to using green power. India’s biggest metro rail system will get its electricity supply from Rewa Solar Park in Madhya Pradesh.
The solar park is all set to begin supplying electricity to DMRC. This news comes in less than a year and a half with the 750 MW project making waves in the market. The solar project promises to sell electric power at than INR 3 (4 US cents) per unit. The Rewa project will in due course meet 90% of the power requisite of the Delhi Metro.
The solar project that created history of sorts in renewable energy is the country is now operation.
As reported earlier that the bidding of Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Park in February 2017 culminated in record low solar tariffs. These were the lowest possible ever awarded to a solar project in India during the bidding procedure at that time.
The park has started generating power from July onwards. This will be purchased by DMRC for running the metros in the city.
As per the current capacity of solar plant, Rewa is producing 10MW of electricity. It is likely that DMRC, two months down the line will start buying green power at INR 2.97 per unit.
DMRC is one of the top customers for the project. The other major customer is the state of Madhya Pradesh through the MP Power Management Co. Ltd.
Manu Srivastava, Principal Secretary and Commissioner, New and Renewable Energy Department, Government of Madhya Pradesh, and Managing Director of RUMSL shares with indiaclimatedialogue.net – “This is probably the first large-scale solar project in India that is supplying power to an institutional customer. It is accessible to an inter-state open customer, which is DMRC in this case.”
Srivastava further added, “The idea is that instead of imposing RPO (renewable purchase obligation) on discoms (electricity distribution companies) that are mostly in the red and forcing them to buy renewable power, why not extend it to willing customers who want to readily buy the cheaper power, which is in their own commercial interest?”
Madhya Pradesh looking at the future viability green power consumption aims to establish slew of solar parks. These will have installed capacity of an additional 1.5 GW. Another institutional customer, the Indian Railways is expected to be one of its top clients.
In order to ensure uninterrupted power supply to DMRC, optimum scheduling has been done on days without optimum sun. In this, the solar plant will supply energy to DMRC on a privileged basis to facilitate meeting its supply requirement and then cater to state’s utility.
The 750MW solar project is among the world’s largest single-site solar park. It will help in savings of INR 46 billion for Madhya Pradesh’s power utilities in the next 25 years. For DMRC it will help the metro rail corporation INR 14 billion.
As per the MP government, this green power project will have huge environmental impact. It is result in carbon emission savings and will be equal to planting 26 million trees.
Source: metrorailnews.in
