The Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal today said that the country’s first ultra mega solar power park with a capacity of 2500 MW will come up in Andhra Pradesh.
He announced this after nine memoranda of understanding were inked today, majority of them in the power sector, coinciding with the 100 days rule of N. Chandrababu Naidu as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh.
The Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and Andhra Pradesh Government and the Solar Energy Corporation of India, AP Genco and New and Renewable Energy Development Corporation of Andhra Pradesh entered into agreements to develop ultra mega solar park in the State.
The Power Minister said that the State Chief Minister has been pursuing with the Centre relentlessly over the last 50 days and this has resulted in the signing of memoranda in the power sector.
“If the AP Government’s and Naidu’s plans go through as planned, the State would have an installed capacity of 27,000 MW up from 9,000 MW thereby tripling the current capacity by 2019,” he said.
The State also signed an agreement on Power for All scheme which aims to provide round the clock power to all sections of power consumers and another agreement for energy conservation.
He lauded the efforts of the State to reduce the transmission and distribution losses from the current 14.5 per cent to 9 per cent within couple of years as against the Central Government’s target of bringing down the losses to 12 per cent.
During the meeting, several other agreements were signed, including allotment of 1103 acres of land for DRDO in Chinnatayyur and Kokkiralankonda in Chittoor district and 13 acres of land for Society for Applied Microwave Electromagnetic Engineering & Research (SAMEER), Government of India.
Naidu said that the MOUs signed with NTPC, Hero MotoCorp and other entail a total investment of about Rs 80,000 crore into the State.