Areva Solar's maiden project to be commissioned next month

The French energy group was selected by Reliance Power Ltd for building a CSP installation of 250 MW capacity

French energy group Areva Solar's maiden project in India, considered one of the largest solar power projects in Asia, would be online by this year end, a top company official said today.

Areva Solar was selected by Mumbai-based Reliance Power Ltd for building a Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) installation of 250 MW capacity.

"Towards the end of this year, you can see the commissioning of the plant...", Areva Solar India Managing Director Siddhartha Ghoshal said in a presentation at a conference here.

He said this was one of the largest solar power projects under the National Solar Mission, which plans to add 20,000 MW of solar power by 2020.

Declining to reveal the total project cost, he said the cost that involves the Areva Solar part was about Rs 10.5 crore per Mega watt.

"It is a project awarded to us by Reliance Power. I am unable to give the total project cost. We have partnered with Larsen and Toubro Chennai, Pune-based Thermax and Engineering India Ltd for this project", he said.

The project, coming up on 600 acres in Rajasthan, close to Pokhran, would employ 2,000 people, with a localisation level of 60%. "It is a huge scale project. Reliance Power will use Areva Solar's CLFR technology," he said.

Areva Solar is developing the project adopting the Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) technology, that uses reflected sunlight to heat liquid filled tubes that generate high pressure steam producing electricity via turbine.

The project would represent a reduction of around 557,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually compared with a coal fired plant.

The company was currently engaged in many projects worldwide, he added.