Friday, February 14, 2014: Andhra Pradesh’s famous port city was facing major power shortage with daily power cuts. In a move to battle out summer blues and bring clean energy, the Visakha Dairy installed a solar plant spread over an area of 5 acre. The 1.15 MW plant reduced the dependence of the dairy on the power grid and it is likely to save upto Rs 150,000 on power bills, every month.
In a TOI report, SV Ramana, the managing director of Visakha Dairy said that they want to reduce their dependence on power. “Since our industry caters to highly perishable goods, power is an important factor for the dairy. Despite having diesel generators, which cause massive air and noise pollution, and involve high maintenance, the Visakha Dairy was found fit to shift to clean energy,” he added.
Ganta Srinivas Rao, the state minister for investment, infrastructure and ports, inaugurated the solar plant, on Wednesday. Both the central and state governments give subsidies for solar power installments. The dairy plant dedicated 5 acres of land space and invited tenders to set up the solar plant. Renen Solar Private Limited from Hyderabad installed the solar plant for the Visakha dairy.
The dairy has a warranty of five years and guaranteed power generation of 8 million units in five years (1.6 million units per year, approximately). It profited with the benefits of renewable energy certificates (REC) that are trading friendly.
In recent news, the price of RECs dropped from Rs 13 per unit to Rs 9 per unit, in the last few years. The dairy is still at an advantage to save massive money and get back its return on investment in hardly 3 to 4 years. Ramana also said that they are planning to increase capacity, but the cost of land plays an important role. So they are searching for land near the grid which can reduce the cost of laying power cables from the solar power plant to the dairy.
