Statkraft inaugurates its first large-scale utility solar park in Tirunelveli, India
Global renewable energy developer and generator, Statkraft has announced that it has successfully commissioned its first large-scale utility solar power project with 55 MWac/76 MWdc capacity in Nellai, India.
Sharing about the company's ambitious plans for India, Jürgen Tzschoppe, EVP International Power, Statkraft, stated "Statkraft has an ambition of ramping up as a solar and wind power developer in India and is currently focusing on the development of greenfield solar projects at utility-scale. Nellai is the first project in realizing this business objective and supports our strategy to strengthen our industrial presence in the solar segment and grow our customer-oriented business."
The 76 MWp Nellai solar power plant, which is having 1,40,000 solar panels installed and spread across 773,678 m2 area of land in Tamil Nadu, will generate approx 124 GWh of renewable energy per year to fulfill the annual power consumption of approximately 5 lakh Indian homes.
Moreover, the Norway-headquartered company's Indian subsidiary has developed the Nellai solar park under the Indian Group Captive model in which its customers own a minimum share of 26 percent in the plant and bought the electricity produced as per the long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) signed.
"We are very excited to complete our first utility-scale solar park in India and intend to develop more solar projects across the country. Nellai will help industries in the state of Tamil Nadu meet their renewable energy requirements at an affordable price. We aim to become a key developer and operator of hydro, wind, and solar assets, spreading our investments across different technologies and business models," said Rahul Varshney, Country Manager India, Statkraft.
However, the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) services for the solar project have been provided by German solar project specialist Belectric through its Indian arm Belectric Photovoltaic India Pvt Ltd. Also, Belectric will provide its operation & maintenance (O&M) services for the first three years of operations of the plant.
