Project Overview:
The 431 MW DC solar project is located in the Neemuch district of Madhya Pradesh. The project is spread over 1635.63 acres of land and makes use of single axis tracker and bifacial glass to glass modules.
Objectives:
The key objectives behind implementing this project include:
- Combination of Single Axis Tracker and Bi-facial module: Establishing a system which uses a combination of single axis tracker and bi-facial module.
- Reducing Carbon footprint: Reducing Carbon foot print by achieving CO2 offset of 780,300 tonnes per year
- Project and SCADA commissioning: Ensuring that the project commissioning and SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) commissioning took place simultaneously for maintaining highest safety standards.
- Seamless SVG Operation: Ensuring that the project was CEA compliant, which led to seamless application of SVG.
- Supply to Western Central Railways and MP Power Management Co. Ltd.: To ensure continuous power supply to Western Central Railways and MP Power Management Co. Ltd.
- WRLDC Compliance: Ensuring that the system is WRLDC compliant through the innovative combination of SVG and harmonic filters.
Key Project Features:
- COW: This is one of the breakthrough technologies that has been implemented in this site. The Conduit on Wire Technology (COW) has helped the company in cost cutting. This technology ensures complete protection of LT cables as the wire is neither below ground nor directly above the ground. In this case the wire is hanging on a GI wire, which ensures complete safety. This avoids unnecessary damage owing to underground or just above the ground wire placement.
- SVG: This is the first solar project site in India where the SVG technology has been implemented in the first attempt. This lead to massive increase in the speed of implementation of the project.
- Harmonic Filter: This project makes use of the harmonic filter technology. The implementation of the harmonic filters ensured no impurity in electricity.
- AC DC ratio of 1:3: An AC DC ratio of 1:3 ensured that the efficiency of this system further increased. This leads in much better power generation.
- Marble Dust: The project made an innovative use of marble dust. Owing to high luminescence, the marble dust increases the intensity of reflection which will ultimately increase the generation capacity.
Critical Challenge Analysis:
- Rocky Terrain: The land was a rocky terrain. This led to lots of challenges while digging the land.
- Line Readiness: The line readiness was a challenge. Taking the transmission upstream was a challenge. Therefore, the engineers had to focus on polling station and transmission line as well simultaneously.
- Remote location: As the project was outside the scope of industrial area, vendor management and development was a challenge. Additionally, during the rainy season, it was difficult to work on the site as the ground was not supporting free movement of workers.
Innovation Highlights and Impact:
This is first solar project site which makes use of a combination of tracker and bi-facial modules. This combination ensures that the efficiency of the entire system went up by more than 15%, which led to peak power supply for relatively increased number of hours. The HT cable was also put into ballast which led to continuous supply of power even during challenging weather conditions.
Conclusion:
The project highlights the highest level engineer standards as per which the 431 MW DC solar project has been made operational. The project is also one of the finest examples of how the technical prowess led to the development of one of the best solar power projects in the current times despite being offered a relatively lower biding price.
