World's 'largest' green project in India

A mobile phone company and a public body have come together for what they say would be the “largest green energy project in the world” in India. The project with an investment of $50 billion in a major clean energy project (perhaps the world’s largest) over the next 10 years will see 13 GW worth of wind and solar power capacity in a rural area of Karnataka. The majority of the planned capacity would be from solar photovoltaics — 10 GW. And the remaining 3 GW would be from wind farms.

The first phase will be 100 MW of solar and 200 MW of wind capacity and it is expected to be commissioned in the next 36 months.

Twelve high potential sites in Karnataka for the solar energy project and four districts to set up the 3 GW of wind farms have been identified.

Well, the solar mission to build 20 GW of solar power by 2022 seems poised to take off. Alongside distributed solar power is also making strides.

Yet another Indian telecom company is in the news for deploying simple cell phone base stations that need as little as 50 watts of solar-provided power. The components can be assembled and booted up by two people and mounted on a rooftop in six hours.

Expanding cell networks in many rural areas is blocked by non-availability of sufficient electricity to power base stations. Existing off-the-grid base stations in India require expensive diesel generators. Energy costs are particularly high, as [base-station] sites often have two generators. In such a scenario, the solar powered base stations should be a big hit.