Vizag’s floating solar power plant to produce 1MW electricity by June end

Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) is making arrangements to produce electricity which values around Rs 5 Crores every year by using the floating solar power plant technology at the Muduasarlova Reservoir.

The reservoir, located in Hanumanthawaka which is bestowing around 1 million gallons of water per day, would also be a bedrock for the floating power plant comprising of 6250 solar panels. GVMC has started the construction of the 2MW solar farm spread across 6 acres. The Corporation is making efforts to start producing at least 1MW of electric power by the end of July.

The state government and GVMC, under Smart City Mission, has been granted a loan of Rs 18 Crores from the Asian Development Bank to establish another floating solar power plant at the Megadhri Gedda Reservoir located near to Visakhapatnam. The power plant at this reservoir would avail the chances of producing 3MW of electricity. 9400 panels would be floating around at Megadhri Gedda to produce 3MW of electricity every month.

The estimated units of solar panels to be manufactured every year for Mudasarlova plant would be 34 Lakhs while for the one at Megadhri Gedda would be 51 Lakhs.

The plants would be constructed in such a way that there would be no bad effects on the water in the reservoirs. The officials have mentioned that Aluminium material would be used instead of iron to avoid rusting of the panels.

The solar panels will be mounted on top of the floaters which will hover on the water. They are deemed to have higher efficiency over the ground installed panels due to the cooler temperature of the water, thus providing better performance.