Godawari Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) Plant Generates Above Expectations

Godawari Power (GODPI) & Ispat Ltd.’s concentrated solar power (CSP) plant, Asia’s biggest, is generating more power than expected, allaying criticism that the technology was failing in India, a government official said.

Godawari’s 50-megawatt concentrating solar power project is at times generating 10 megawatts more than its stated capacity, said Tarun Kapoor, head of solar policy at the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

“People were saying that solar thermal was not going to work out in India,” Kapoor said at the Intersolar conference in Mumbai today. “That has now been proven wrong.”

Godawari’s plant is the first of seven solar-thermal generators planned in India. The remaining six have had their deadlines extended to February from May, Kapoor said. Concentrated Solar Power Plants by Reliance Power Ltd. (RPWR) and Megha Engineering & Infrastructures Ltd. should be finished soon, he said.

Solar thermal technology focuses sunlight on liquids to produce steam to run conventional turbines. The other way to generate power from sunlight is to use photovoltaic panels to convert the rays directly to electricity.