Urbanisation and economic development are leading to a rapid rise in energy demand in urban areas leading to enhanced ‘Green House Gas’ (GHG) emissions. Several Indian cities and towns are experiencing rapid growth in the peak electricity demand.
The local governments and the power generation units are finding it difficult to cope with this rapid rise in demand and as a result, most of the cities and towns are facing electricity shortages and frequent shutdowns, leading to production and man hour losses. Alternative sources such as in-house DG sets are expensive, clumsy and highly pollutant. Both Central and State Governments are extensively promoting alternative sources of energy to meet growing demands in rural and urban areas. With around 300 days of sunshine every year, India has amongst the best condition in the world to harness solar energy. Rapid expansion of solar power can not only improve the quality of life but also create thousands of jobs in the solar industry besides improving environment, productivity and general health.
The Central Government has initiated various programmes in the urban areas to promote solar power for homes, hotels, hostels, hospitals and industries by execution of Solar Photovoltaic Systems (SPV). The SPVs can be installed on fields, open areas and rooftops of the buildings and generate substantial quantity of power to meet in-house demand as well as feed into the grid. Karnataka Government has initiated ‘Rooftop Solar Generation’ Scheme for Industries and Farmers in the state wherein the producer can feed surplus power generated by the SPVs to the grid and help reduce the demand – supply gap.
Recognising the many benefits of this initiative, Featherlite’s manufacturing unit located at Hejjala, has utilised every available roof space within its premises for the installation of 3,000 solar panels, generating 320Wp of power per day, across an area of 70,000 sq-ft. While the panels were imported from Canadian Solar Inc., the string invertors were manufactured and procured from Delta Power Solutions Pvt Ltd to support the power generation and transmission to the Power Receiving Yard. The system has been integrated with State power supply Board and is forecasted to produce 1.5 million units per annum of which 0.5 million units will be fed into the grid lighting scores of households.
The plant was erected and commissioned by a team of engineers from M/s GreenSol Renewable Power Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore and Featherlite in a record time of 30 days. This major initiative by the company has reaffirmed the group’s commitment to minimising environment degradation by reducing carbon footprint and helping the Government to achieve “Electricity for All” by 2020 goal set by the Prime Minister.