GGGI to Develop 250 MW Solar Plant Along Mumbai-Nagpur Superhighway

• With its rapid economic growth and increasing need for power services, India is well-placed to invest a lot more in clean, cheap reliable sources of power, especially in the solar sector. Nonetheless, this potential stays mainly untapped. The Indian federal government has set an objective of 100 gigawatts (GW) of solar energy capacity by 2022, yet it had actually just installed 34 GW by mid-2020.

In response to this issue, South Korea-based the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) is developing a 250 MW solar PV plant for the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) along a 700 kilometres superhighway to connect Mumbai with Nagpur. This project is expected to lay the structure for future e-mobility and power demands for developments along the highway.

GGGI is a treaty-based intergovernmental organisation that advertises sustainable economic growth in developing nations. In 2018, it formalised a collaboration with MSRDC to support the superhighway project. In the partnership, GGGI has provided technological help, financial investment due persistance as well as supported financial debt structuring for the project. Based upon GGGI evaluation, REC Limited has approved a loan of circa USD110 million for the project. The MSRDC board has authorized as much as 25% of equity investment for the project. The project is currently under Power Purchase Agreement discussions and also the project will certainly break ground in mid-2022.

"This is the first renewable energy program, that is lined up with a large road infrastructure project in India. GGGI has played a substantial duty in establishing the foundation and also leading the way for future environment-friendly e-mobility framework on the freeway," shared Gulshan Vashistha, GGGI's Regional Technical Lead for Asia as well as the Pacific.

In addition, GGGI led the prep work of the technical and industrial researches, consisting of the land assessment, grid research, ecological as well as social impact evaluations, and also in-depth monetary design that showed a persuading company instance for reviewing solar PV alternatives. Beyond the layout phase, GGGI safeguarded finance for the project.

The anticipated longer-term effect of this project is to lower CO2 emissions by 10 million loads throughout the project's 25‐year lifetime as well as create around 200 green jobs. This project will lead the path for MSRDC's added strategy to construct charging stations on the superhighway.