India: Abhijeet’s concentrated solar power project on track

The order for the turbines has been placed on Siemens. The parabolic mirrors are being bought from Rio Glass of Spain. The ‘heat transfer fluid’ receivers will be supplied by Siemens, Israel, while the American company Solutia will supply the 1,200-tonnes of the fluid. Hyspan of the US is to supply the ‘ball joints’, another critical component.

Another Israeli company will supply the 10,000-odd tonnes of metal structures (that support the mirrors). Some 7 km of pipes will run through the 500-acre site. The biggest cost of a concentrated solar thermal power plant is ‘land’. The turbine, mirrors, receivers and metal structures account for 10 per cent each of the total cost of the solar energy project. What is yet to be ordered for is the instrumentation system, which, according to sources, could be bought later.

Right now at the site, nearly a thousand people are doing the civil works. The EPC contractor, Shriram EPC-led consortium, is confident of completing the project well ahead of the deadline of May 9, 2013. Corporate Ispat’s was one of the seven winning bids for the solar thermal projects, bid out by NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam (NVVN), under the first batch of projects of the first phase of the National Solar Mission. Corporate Ispat won the project quoting a tariff of Rs 12.24 a unit. The only other solar energy project that is also at an advanced stage of order-placing is that of Godawari Ispat.

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