India will house the world’s largest solar farm after an agreement was signed to develop a 750-megawatt project in Rewa district of Madhya Pradesh state.
The 750-MW project will be developed by state-run Urja Vikas Nigam and Solar Energy Corp. of India, and is expected to cost INR40 billion (US$ 643 million). The project will sit on 1,500 hectares of land. Construction is expected to start this year.
The project will be developed in three stages of 250MW, with the first phase expected to be completed in April 2016.
First Solar recently commissioned the 550-MW Desert Sunlight Solar Farm, located in Desert Center, Riverside County, California. The project, owned by NextEra Energy Resources, GE Energy Financial Services and Sumitomo Corp, is the largest solar project globally.
India is pushing for an escalation in its solar project capacity with a 100 gigawatt target of installed capacity by 2020, 33 times more than the current installed capacity. This is part of the government’s plans to raise renewable energy contribution to the country’s energy mix from the current 6% to 15% by 2027.
US project developers SunEdison and First Solar recently announced separate plans to develop 20GW of wind and solar farms in India, and are amongst companies that have committed to develop 266GW of renewable energy projects in the country.
The International Renewable Energy Agency said that as India is expected to surpass China as the world’s most populous nation by 2030, the growing demand energy in the country cannot be met alone by traditional sources.
“Renewable energy must be a major part of the solution because it can meet the demand cheaply and sustainably while at the same time achieving broader socio-economic objectives,” said Adnan Z. Amin, IRENA’s director-general.
“Falling prices are driving renewable energy investment in India, which rose 13 per cent last year and is expected to surpass 10 billion dollars in 2015,” said Amin. “Adoption of increasingly cost-effective renewables holds the genuine promise of a new age of socio-economic development, powered by clean, increasingly decentralised, and sustainable energy. The opportunity for India is tremendous.”