India has built a new solar power plant at the facility of Kamuthi, Tamil Nadu in southern India that has a capacity of 648 MW and covers an area of 10 sq km. This makes it the largest solar power plant at a single location, taking the title from the Topaz Solar Farm in California, which has a capacity of 550 MW, local media report.
Built in eight months and funded by the Adani Group, the solar plant is cleaned every day by a robotic system, charged by its own solar panels.
Furthermore, the plant is estimated to produce enough electricity to power about 150,000 homes. The project is comprised of 2.5 million individual solar modules, and cost $679m to build.
It is said that this new solar plant has helped nudge India’s total installed solar capacity across the 10 GW mark, joining only a handful of countries that can make this claim.
India is expected to be on schedule to become the world’s third biggest solar market from 2017 and onwards, after China and the US.
However, despite the fast-growing solar power industry, India will still need to increase its take-up of solar panels if it is to achieve the ambitious targets set by the government. It is part of the government’s goal to produce 40 percent of its power from non-fossil fuels by 2030. Yet, India aims to power 60 million homes by the sun, by 2022.
This aim has been praised by environmental groups and is hoped will also help reduce the country’s problem with air quality. It is noteworthy that at the beginning of this month, the pollution level in the capital New Delhi reached its worst levels in 17 years.