Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has successfully commissioned India’s largest floating Solar PV plant.
Located at NTPC Simhadri in Andhra Pradesh, the 25 MW floating solar project covers an area of 100 acres, leading to saving of valuable land resource and conserving water by reducing evaporation.
Notably, with its unique state-of-the-art design, the project is an engineering marvel, created by BHEL. Besides producing clean power, the project will also reduce water evaporation by providing shade to the covered area.
It will also have a higher yield as compared to conventional ground-mounted projects due to the cooling effect.
BHEL has designed an innovative floating array for the floating solar plant to meet the unique requirement of anchoring the support structures without touching or loading, either the reservoir floor or the bund structure.
This complex module array for the floating solar plant has been designed – for the first time in India – to withstand gusts of wind up to 180 km/hr. In view of the coastal location of the project site that leads to severe corrosion, all the platform structures and other equipment have been made corrosion resistant.
BHEL’s portfolio of floating SPV projects is the largest in the country with more than 45 MW projects commissioned and around 107 MW under execution.
Reference- BHEL PR, PV Magazine, Hindustan Times, Mercom India