DVC moots 1 776-MW floating solar projects

Kolkata, Sep 27 (PTI) State-owned thermal power major
Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) will focus only on solar
projects to add capacity, a top official said.
It has already mooted 1776-MW floating solar projects in
four of its dams in West Bengal and Jharkhand, the two states
that jointly own the corporation along with the Union
government.
DVC has finalised a 50-MW solar project at Panchet (West
Bengal), the tender for which has been floated, he said.
"We will execute 1776-MW floating solar plants in the
four dams of Maithon, Tilaya, Konar and Panchet. The project
will be executed in three phases and the first will be of
50MW," DVC member secretary Prabir Kumar Mukhopadhyay told
PTI.
He said the company has zeroed in on the L1 bidder for
the Panchet project and the work order will be finalised in
early October.
The feasibility study of the solar projects, which are
likely to utilise about 15 per cent of their capacities, was
carried out by the Solar Energy Corporation of India.
Mukhopadhyay said the corporation has large tracts of
land and in the last two years, it had retired old thermal
capacities to the tune of 840 MW at Bokaro, Chandrapura and
Durgapur.
DVC now has about 7,000 MW of thermal capacity.
The corporation is also concerned about the spares of the
1,200-MW thermal power plant at Raghunathpur in Purulia
district of West Bengal, as supply of its parts come from
Shanghai Electric Corporation in China.
The Indian Army and the Chinese People's Liberation Army
(PLA) have been locked in a tense standoff in multiple areas
along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh since
early May.
"We are concerned about maintenance of spares, which
iscritical for running the plant. Clarification has been
sought as to whether we can import from China," Mukhopadhyay
said.
Indigenisation of critical spares will take at least two
years, company officials said. PTI BSM
RBT RBT

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)