The Government of India-owned electricity utility, Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC), plans to put up 4,000 MW of solar power projects across the country. The NLC Chairman and Managing Director, B Surender Mohan, said this while inaugurating the company’s 10-MW solar plant at the Neyveli township today.
The 10-MW plant was set up with the panels made by another public sector company, BHEL, the power equipment manufacturer, at a cost of Rs 7.46 crore a MW. The electricity generated by the plant will be sold to the state electricity distribution utility, TANGEDCO, for Rs 7.01 a KWhr. NLC expects the plant to produce 1.64 million KWhr per MW.
The 4,000-MW plans is for the long-term, and the company has named Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Puducherry and Rajasthan as the five states where it would put up solar projects.
For starters, NLC will go ahead with a 130-MW plant at Neyveli and another 25 MW at Barsingar, Rajasthan, where it has lands, says a press release from the company.
NLC runs 4,240 MW of thermal power plants that use the locally-mined lignite as the fuel. Apart from solar, the other renewable energy project of the company is the 51-MW wind farm that is coming up in southern Tamil Nadu.