A 100 kWp Floating Solar PV plant, the largest of its kind in India as on date, indigenously developed as a part of ‘Make In India’ initiative, was inaugurated by A K Jha, Director (Technical) in presence of V B Fadnavis, RED (SR), R K Srivastava, ED (NETRA) at Rajiv Gandhi Combined Cycle Power Plant (RGCCPP) Kayamkulam, Kerala.
This floating platform has been indigenously developed by NETRA (NTPC Energy Technology Research Alliance), the R&D arm of NTPC Ltd, in collaboration with Central Institute of Plastic Engineering & Technology (CIPET), Chennai and patent has been applied. The system was installed by Swelect Energy Systems Ltd, Chennai with support from NETRA & NTPC Kayamkulam station in a short span of 22 days. Such systems are fast emerging as an alternative to conventional ground mounted PV systems which are land intensive. It has various benefits like conserving water through reduction of evaporation, increased generation due to cooling effect on the panels, reduced installation time etc and could be installed on saline water environment. Installation potential of such type of systems in India is huge because of abundance of water bodies, within NTPC, the potential is approx. 800 MWp in various reservoirs in existing stations. Particularly in Kerala, due to availability of water bodies and lack of presence of enough land, this type of system has a great potential. NTPC has already started working on scaling up such type of system for MW scale installation.
