Tata teams up with Aussies for India’s first floating solar plant

The pilot project, which is due to start operations by the end of the year, is based on a Sunengy patented Liquid Solar Array (LSA) technology which uses traditional concentrated photovoltaic technology - a lens and a small area of solar cells that tracks the sun throughout the day, like a sunflower

LSA inventor and Sunengy executive director and chief technology officer, Phil Connor, said that when located on and combined with hydroelectric dams, LSA provides the breakthroughs of reduced cost and "on demand" 24/7 availability that are necessary for solar power to become widely used.

Floating the LSA on water reduces the need for expensive supporting structures to protect it from high winds. The lenses submerge in bad weather and the water also cools the cells which increases their efficiency and life-span.

According to Connor, hydro power supplies 87 percent of the world's renewable energy and 16 percent of the world's power but is limited by its water resource. He said an LSA installation could match the power output of a typical hydro dam using less than 10 percent of its surface area and supply an additional six to eight hours of power per day. Modeling by Sunengy shows that a 240 MW LSA system could increase annual energy generation at the Portuguese hydro plant, Alqueva, by 230 percent.

"LSA effectively turns a dam into a very large battery, offering free solar storage and opportunity for improved water resource management," said Connor. "If India uses just one percent of its 30,000 square kilometers of captured water with our system, we can generate power equivalent to 15 large coal-fired power stations."

Construction of the pilot plant in India will commence in August 2011. Sunengy also plans to establish a larger LSA system in Australia's Hunter Valley by mid-2012 before going into full production.