Tata Power switches on India’s largest floating solar project 

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Tata Power today announced its solar manufacturing and EPC arm Tata Power Solar has commissioned India’s largest floating solar power project in Kayamkulam, Kerala. The solar plant, with an installed capacity of 101.6 MWp, is built over a 350-acre water body in Kerala backwaters. It is also India’s first floating solar plant to benefit from a power purchase agreement. The plant will supply the power generated to Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB).

“This installation was completed within the scheduled timeline, despite the arduous challenges of variable water depths, high sea tides, and severe water salinity concerns faced throughout the project’s construction duration,” Tata Power stated.

Tata Power said its project execution team built a scaffolding platform on the water body to make the entire solar plant float on water. The plant boasts a 5 MW inverter on a floating platform. The whole project is anchored to the waterbed of Kerala backwater using 134 cast pile foundations that are bored to a depth of 20 meters underwater to support the central monitoring and control stations and the 33/220 kV switchyard. All this was done by dredging soil strata underwater, wherein the high groundwater was also a deterrent, the company added.

The entire array involving floats and solar panel modules had to be towed for 3 kilometers on a sea-linked National waterway, which was 15 meters deep, exposing the solar modules to high winds and gushing tides often reaching a height of about 3.5 meters. To operationalize the project, Tata Power Solar ‘s execution team was successfully able to synchronize the 33/220 kV air-insulated substation with the existing 220 kV gas-insulated substation.

With the commissioning of this project, Tata Power Solar’s total utility-scale solar project portfolio has reached 9.7 GWp.

 

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