State-owned Coal India, which accounts for more than 80% of that country’s coal production, said it planned to install solar power plants at its operations across the country.
However, the most striking aspect of the decision is Coal India’s reasoning behind it.
“India has an abundance of sunshine and the trend of depletion of fossil fuels is compelling energy planners to examine the feasibility of using renewable sources of energy like solar, wind, and so on,” Coal India said in a bid document, according to DNA, the English-language Indian news source that broke the story.
According to the World Coal Association, India generates about 69% of its electricity from coal, with production and consumption consistently rising over the past 10 years.
However, it hasn’t been nearly enough to power the country, with Coal India falling under serious pressure from power companies and government to increase the amount and quality of the coal it produces.
Company officials plan to brainstorm with prospective bidders on the scope of work and technical specifications for the project, DNA reported.
The first plant to be developed would be a 2MW plant over 9 acres of land at its Sampalbur coal plant in Odisha.
The bid document reportedly confirmed that the solar plant would use crystalline solar photovoltaic panels in a modular form, which can be scaled up to have the requisite system to generate and export power to the main grid.
While this will be a commercial project, Coal India is also reportedly considering installing solar photovoltaic panels at Ranchi where its mining research arm, the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute, is located.
Installing roof-top solar panels at the mining areas and staff colonies at Ranchi would be aimed at reducing Coal India’s own energy bills, officials told DNA.
Coal India reported in a filing last week that it did not meet its off-take or production targets for the April-May period.
It produced only 70.3Mt in the two months compared to the target set for 71.65Mt.
Coal India also missed its off-take target for April-May selling only 78.16Mt of the fuel against the target of 80.95Mt.
However, both figures were a slight increase on production and off-take for the same period last year.
