Kochi, India, August 18, 2015: Cochin International airport (CIAL), the country’s (State of Kerala, South West India) first airport built under PPP model has scripted another chapter in aviation history by becoming the first airport in the world that completely operates on solar power. Hon. Chief Minister Mr. Oommen Chandy inaugurated the 12 MWp (MegaWatt Peak) solar power plant, on August 18, 2015, comprising of 46,150 solar panels laid across 45 acres near cargo complex. Now, Cochin airport will have 50,000 to 60,000 thousand units of electricity (kWh) per day to be consumed for all its operational functions, which technically make the airport ‘absolutely power neutral‘.
CIAL which has always been adhered to the philosophy of sustainable development, ventured into the Solar PV sector during March 2013, by installing a 100 kWp solar PV Plant on the roof top of the Arrival Terminal Block. After the successful commissioning of this plant, CIAL installed a 1 MWp solar PV power plant partly on the roof top and partly on the ground in the Aircraft Maintenance Hangar facility within the Airport premises.
After commissioning, these plants have so far saved more than 550 MT of CO2 emission contributing to the efforts of CIAL towards minimizing environmental degradation.
Inspired by the success of the above plants, CIAL decided to set up a larger scale 12 MWp solar PV plant as part of its green initiatives. This will come up in an area of about 45 acres near the International Cargo premises.
The work has been awarded to M/s Bosch Ltd. The project components include PV modules of 265 Wp capacity manufactured by Renesola, and Inverters of 1MW capacity manufactured by ABB India. After commissioning, this installation is expected to generate around 48,000 units per day, which along with the electricity generated from the existing 1.10 MWp plants, would be sufficient to meet the power requirement of the Airport. This is a grid connected system without any battery storage and a power banking module with the Kerla State electricity board (KSEB) has been worked out; wherein, CIAL gives as much power it produces (in day time) to (the grid of) KSEB and ‘buy’ back the power from them when needed (especially in night).This plant will produce 18 million units of power from ‘sun’ annually – the power equivalent to feed 10,000 homes for one year.
Over the next 25 years, this green power project will avoid carbon dioxide emissions from coal fired power plants by more than 3 lakh metric tons (300,000 metric tons), which is equivalent to planting 3 million trees.
Source: Cochin International airport