Mumbai: Adani Enterprises Ltd, part of the infrastructure conglomerate Adani Group, on Thursday announced the commissioning of India’s largest solar power plant in Kutch district of Gujarat.
The 40MW project marks the company’s entry into the growing solar energy space. It plans to expand the capacity of this plant to 100MW.
The project was awarded to the company under the Gujarat Solar Power Policy of 2009. The plant uses solar photovoltaic technology with more than 400,000 photovoltaic modules.
The National Solar Mission, released in 2008, targets the deployment of 20,000MW of solar power in the country by 2022.
India is endowed with vast solar energy potential. About 5,000 trillion kilo Watt hour (kWh) per year of energy is incident over India’s land area with most parts receiving 4-7 kWh per square meter per day.
Still, some of the larger Indian power utilities have so far been slow to harness solar power, concentrating instead on coal-fired thermal power plants. Instead, smaller firms and startups focused solely on alternate power have warmed up to the opportunity.
Among the larger utilities, Tata Power Ltd. has said that it intends to generate 6,000MW of power from alternate sources by 2017.