The Outlook for Solar Power in India is Positive
India has seen a lot of activity in the solar power industry over recent years, and the country has set forth similar goals to those being established in the USA.
India aims to have an installed solar power capacity of 100 gigawatts by the year 2022, and massive upgrades to the 260-gigawatt power grid are also being planned so that it will be able to handle all of the solar power projects coming online over the next few years.
The price difference between the energy from solar farms and the energy from coal-fired plants is closing quickly in India, and by 2020 solar power is expected to be 10% cheaper than power from domestic coal.
Some solar farms in India are already selling their energy at $0.06 per kilowatt-hour, comparable to coal plants.
India is home to over 1.3 billion people, and supplying the energy needs of such a large population while being environmentally friendly is a very complex challenge.
Solar power can play a key role in meeting India’s energy needs while reducing the environmental impact of electric power production.
The Energy Needs of Cochin International Airport
The Cochin International Airport in southern India consumes around 48,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day, which is a considerable amount of energy.
As you would expect, they were paying a very large electric bill every single month, so they decided to start producing their energy with solar power.
The project started out modestly, with the construction of a 100-kilowatt solar array on top of the arrivals terminal, composed of 400 individual photovoltaic modules with a rated capacity of 250 watts each.
This project started to have satisfactory performance, so the airport management decided to install another array, but with ten times the capacity of the first!
A 1-megawatt solar power plant was built on the aircraft maintenance facility, built partially on the ground and partially on the rooftops. This time, a total of 4,000 solar photovoltaic modules were used.
Both the 100-kW and the 1-MWsolar power plants were equipped with remote monitoring technology through a SCADA system, and they have prevented over 500 metric tons of carbon pollution from being emitted ever since they came online.
Of course, even though a 1.1-megawatt solar photovoltaic system can produce a lot of energy each day, the output was still small for the monstrous energy needs of Cochin International Airport LTD (CIAL).
A project of this size can generate more than 5,000 kWh per day with the sunshine available in India, but CIAL needed 48,000 kWh per day to go fully solar.
Therefore, the airport administration decided to ramp up their energy production and install all the necessary solar power capacity to meet 100% of their needs.
The First Net-Zero Energy Airport in the World
Building a net-zero energy home or building is challenging, but achieving it for the 7th largest airport in India is a truly impressive engineering feat.
The third stage of the CIAL solar power project was by far the largest, consisting of 12 megawatts of capacity.
The project started operating on 18th August 2015, and the following is a breakdown of its characteristics:
- It will prevent over 300,000 metric tons of carbon pollution over the next 25 years. The environmental benefit is comparable to planting a forest of three million trees!
- The project cost was around 620 million rupees, equivalent to 9.3 million dollars, and the expected payback period is six years.
- The photovoltaic system covers over 45 acres of land belonging to the Cochin airport, located around the international cargo complex.
- The total number of solar panels installed was 46,150.
- The output of the solar array is equivalent to the energy needs of 10,000 Indian homes.
The project was feasible thanks to a net metering arrangement with the Kerala State Electricity Board, or KSEB.
This allowed Cochin airport to fully meet its energy needs with a power source that only operates during daytime.
- They sized the photovoltaic system according to their energy needs over a 24-hour period.- During daytime, the solar farm produces more energy than what the airport needs and the surplus is exported to the grid.
- During nighttime, or during cloudy days with insufficient solar power production, CIAL can purchase back energy from the grid.
- The net energy consumption is close to zero.
In fact, they went a little overboard since their daily production frequently exceeds their daily needs!
The airport needs from 48,000 to 52,000 kWh per day, but the output of the solar array can go as high as 60,000 kWh per day.
This is not an issue, however, since the surplus can be exported to the grid for other consumers to use it.
Projects like this one illustrate the importance of net metering for pushing forth solar photovoltaic power. Without net metering, this project would have been impossible given the enormous amount of energy that would have to be stored for nighttime and cloudy weather.
A new terminal is being built at CIAL, and the corresponding solar power plant expansion is already being planned to keep the facility 100% solar-powered.
