Sunshine Days Here Again!

With a canal top solar policy being drafted in December 2014, here comes another technology to reduce carbon footprints. Gujarat has already come out with a pilot project in this direction.

- Kaushik Joshi

Ingenious ways are being found to mitigate climate change while improving energy security and competitiveness. Newer technologies are being tried to reduce carbon footprints by harnessing solar and wind energy.

One of them was a pilot project involving a canal top solar power plant of the Gujarat State Electricity Company Ltd (GSECL) and is situated on the Narmada irrigation branch canal at Sanand, 24 km from Ahmedabad.

Advantages

“The idea was to reduce evaporative losses of water and generate electricity at the same time. And this novel project could indeed be an effective tool to achieve what can be called a second Green Revolution,” said Bela Jani, executive engineer, GSECL.

“It’s the first of its kind in the world,” said Dr Sagar Agravat, scientist and head, R&D at the Gujarat Energy Research and Management Institute which executed the project.

He said the project was the brainchild of Narendra Modi who floated the idea of using a water body to generate electricity when he was chief minister of Gujarat.

“This project,” said Sagar, “does not need land at all for a solar plant. All it needs is a water body.” The one megawatt (MW) project is spread over 750 meters of canal length with silicon photovoltaic modules.