Wednesday, August 14, 2013: Gujarat, the Indian state is chalking out plans to expand its revolutionary initiative to set up solar panels across canals. A 1MW canal-top solar power project is already operating. Now, other Indian states too are making plans to follow the example of Gujarat. The installation of solar panels across canals will help in saving water along with generation of electricity.
The Gujarat state government will set up a 10MW solar PV project over the Sardar Sarovar canal. This canal supplies water to the arid regions of Saurashtra and Kutch. It is demanding the implementation of the project since the proposed project is supposed to save millions of litres of water from evaporation.
Several advantages are associated with the canal-top solar power projects, like there is no need for the acquisition of land for the project as it increases the capital cost of solar power projects. Apart from this, these projects have more than one sustainability attributes and hence multinational lenders such as World Bank will be interested in providing cheap finance to the projects.
Though, Punjab was the first state to evolve this concept, Gujarat became the first state to establish canal-top solar power project in India. In eastern India, the Damodar Valley Corporation is planning set up1,000 MW of solar power capacity by covering 2,494 kilometres of the irrigation canals.
