BHEL commissions India’s largest floating Solar PV plant

A major milestone towards self-reliance in floating solar technology.

Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has successfully commissioned India’s largest floating Solar PV plant. Located at NTPC Simhadri in Andhra Pradesh, the 25 MW floating SPV project covers an area of 100 acres, leading to the saving of valuable land resources and conserving water by reducing evaporation.

The unique state-of-the-art project is created by BHEL. Besides producing clean power, the project will also reduce water evaporation by providing shade to the covered area. It will also have a higher yield as compared to conventional ground-mounted projects due to the cooling effect.

BHEL has designed the floating array to meet the unique requirement of anchoring the support structures without touching or loading, either the reservoir floor or the bund structure. This complex module array has been designed – for the first time in India to withstand gusts of wind up to 180 km/hr. In view of the coastal location of the project site that leads to severe corrosion, all the platform structures and other equipment have been made corrosion resistant.

BHEL’s scope of work in the project included design, engineering, procurement and construction of the solar project and has been executed by the recently formed Solar Business Division.

BHEL’s portfolio of floating SPV projects is of 45 MW projects commissioned and around 107 MW under execution. It is one of the leaders in EPC for the solar industry in India with an overall EPC portfolio of more than 1.2 GW. In addition to providing  EPC solutions for space-grade solar panels and batteries for space applications, the company offers solutions for both grid-interactive and off-grid, ground-mounted, rooftop, floating and canal top solar plants. In addition to space-grade solar panels and batteries for space applications.