100 MW Floating Solar Project: India’s largest floating solar power project made fully functional 

100 MW Floating Solar Project: India’s largest floating solar power plant has been made fully functional at Ramagundam, Telangana. The National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) declared commercial operation of the plant's final capacity of 20MW out of the total  100 MW Ramagundam Floating Solar PV Project with effect from July 1, 2022. 

With the operationalisation of the 100-MW Solar PV Project at Ramagundam, the total commercial operation of Floating Solar Capacity in Southern Region has risen to 217 MW. The NTPC had declared commercial operation of 92 MW Floating Solar at Kayamkulam (Kerala) and 25 MW Floating Solar on the reservoir of its Simhadri thermal station in Vishakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh last year in August 2021. 

100 MW Floating Solar Project: 7 Important Facts about India’s largest floating solar power plant

• The 100-MW Floating Solar project is powered with advanced technology and environment friendly features. 
• It was built with financial implication of Rs. 423 crores through M/s BHEL as EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) contract.
• The project, divided into 49 blocks with each having 2.5MW, spreads over 500 acres of its reservoir. 
• Each block comprises one floating platform and an array of 11,200 solar modules.
• The floating platform comprises an inverter,  transformer and transformer and a HT breaker. 
• The solar modules are placed on floaters manufactured with HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) material.
• The entire floating system is being anchored through special HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) rope to the dead weights placed in the balancing reservoir bed. The power is evacuated to the existing switch yard through 33KV underground cables.

Significance & Benefits 

• The 100-MW Floating Solar project is unique as it includes all the electrical equipment including inverter, transformer, HT panel and SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) are also on floating ferro cement platforms. 
• The most obvious advantage is minimum land requirement that is mostly for associated evacuation arrangements. 
• The presence of floating solar panels reduces the evaporation rate from water bodies, thus helping in water conservation.
• This would help avoid approximately 32.5 lakh cubic meters per year water evaporation. 

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