Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC) India has proposed to put up solar power plant to produce 500 Megawatt of power in Aruppukottai area of Virudhunagar district soon.

“NLC has got the sanction from TANGEDCO for the project. The process of land acquisition is going on and it will take around six months to install the panels and start producing power,” said M. Prabhagar, Chief Executive Officer of NLC Tamil Nadu Power Limited (NTPL), said.

Mr. Prabhagar was here in connection with an inter-collegiate cultural competition organised by the company in connection with its Vigilance Awareness Week.

He said that NLC had aimed at putting up solar power plants to generate 3,000 MW of power in various States. In Tamil Nadu, it has proposed to instal power plants in Neyveli (165 MW) and at Aruppukottai.

The company needs 2,500 acres of land for the 500-MW project. “But, it need not be in a single place and could have smaller parcels of land where the panels could be put up to generate 50 MW to 100 MW of power,” he said.

Mr. Prabhagar said that solar power project is becoming cheaper. “With the Centre having proposed to generate 1 lakh MW of solar power by 2022, it is likely to become more cheaper. Given the limited resource of fossil fuel, solar power is likely to become the order of the day,” he said.

The only handicap with solar power is that it could generate power around 18% of its installed capacity. “The peak generation could be between 9 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. and it depends on the weather condition,” he said.

However, solar would be cheaper as it would have very minimal recurring expenditure for maintenance and running.

“Washing the solar panels alone will be the the recurring expenditure,” he added. The panels would have a lifespan for 25 years, he added.

Meanwhile, the Chief Vigilance Officer of NLC and Coal India, T. Venkatasubramanian, said that several steps had been taken to put in a system that is transparent in every aspect of functioning of the companies.

Reverse tender system that was introduced for all works above ₹1 crore for the last three years have been implemented for all the works above ₹5 lakh.

“After the conventional tendering system, a reverse tendering process through online will be conducted with the lowest price as the base price. In this process, the bidders will not know who was quoting what price,” Mr. Venkatasubramanian said.

In this process, the NLC has been making a savings of around 10% to 15%. Besides, the time taken for each process had come down by at least one-third, he added.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Madurai/power-generation/article19919339.ece

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