Saturday, November 09, 2013: To develop solar power plants, the Green Energy Development Corporation Ltd (Gedcol), has asked the state government to provide 300 acre of land in central Odisha. Gedcol is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Odisha Hydro Power Corporation (OHPC).
Commenting on the same, Sahadev Khatua, managing director of Gedcol at Odisha Solar Conference 2013 said, “After the government provides us land, we will create all necessary infrastructure for establishment of power plants and private developers would be invited to install their solar projects.”
The corporation is asking land in Kalahandi, Bolangir and Boudh districts, where sun intensity is higher. Besides using the land provided by government, OHPC also plans to make use of the unused land available with it for generation of solar energy.
“We have about 700 acres lying unused with us, out of which about 200 acres are in Kalahandi district only. We are planning to develop solar plants on this land with the help of private developers,” Khatua told Business Standard.
However, Khatua refused to comment on the amount of solar energy that will be generated once all the plans of Gedcol get implemented. According to a policy by the Odisha government, target has been set at 80 MW solar power generation by 2014-15.
A top official of Gedcol told BS, “We will complete the detail project report for generating solar power from roof top of every government establishments in Cuttack-Bhubaneswar area by December this year. By March 2014, the bidding for the project will be completed and in the next financial year, construction work will start.”
