[Dry Ice]

Just across this news, some excerpts from the article

Kerala’s Cochin International Airport Ltd (CIAL) has become the first airport in the world that would be running fully on solar power. The airport officially commissioned a 12 MW solar project on Tuesday.

The state’s chief minister Oomman Chandy commissioned the project constructed on 45 acres near the cargo complex of the airport. The project was executed by Bosch Ltd at a cost of Rs.62 crore in about six months.

Once in operation, the project is estimated to generate about 50,000 units of electricity daily. This, coupled with an an existing 1 MW solar plant commissioned in 2013, which was upgraded from a 100 KW plant set up in the same year, will be enough to meet all power requirements of CIAL, said an airport spokesperson.

http://www.livemint.com/Politics/nYR...-in-Kochi.html

[mayuresh]

When I read the title, I expected some astronomical numbers in terms of cost. But for an airport a cost of 62 crores is really very economical considering the returns.

It's need of the hour for every public and private establishment to adopt renewable energies. I do not know where we lack - technology (I hope not) money, will or all of these?

[Samurai]

I heard this being discussed in the FM talk radio today morning. Looks like lots of people are thinking it will run independently on solar. That is never the case where power supply is critical. In fact, Solar is one of the sources, there will be conventional power supply and diesel generator, each of them capable of supporting the entire load.

When day is bright, solar will supply the power. When it gets cloudy or at night, the load will switch to conventional power grid, and when that fails, diesel generators will take over. Since it is an airport, there might be redundant generators to handle the situation of main generator failing at night when conventional power is out.

[kevintomin]

A commendable effort from the management of this airport. With falling solar panel prices this approach will yield a good return on invest.

As Samurai mentioned, on sunny days solar penetration can be as high as high as 90% along with gird or as high as 60% with diesel backup.

[raghu.t.k]

Nice to see such initiatives esp from Kerala. I think the southern states should tap a lot more on the wind and solar energy to minimize its dependence on coal ..

[myavu]

News coverage by Al Jazeera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FUpo_i0Bbo

Cheers!

[msk016]

The biggest hurdle in going completely off the grid and sustaining mostly on solar power, is of course the battery technology, or rather lack of it. the wind and the sun alone can easily give us up to 80% of our energy requirements, but we don't have the capability to store this energy and use it when we want.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I will say that the oil companies hold the maximum patents for battery technology.

[Gannu_1]

While we went to pick up a friend from Cochin Airport last week, we noticed this H-U-G-E array of solar panels outside the airport! I kid you not, I haven't seen solar arrays on this scale!

Friend remarked that the panels produce sufficient power to light up the airport throughout the day and night plus they give some of the power to KSEB. Looks like he was right!

An excerpt from the CNN article dated March 2016:

Fed up with their hefty electricity bill, managers at Cochin International Airport in southern India took matters into their own hands.

The plant came online in August, making Cochin the world's first fully solar-powered airport. The tens of thousands of panels generate on average slightly more than the roughly 48,000-50,000 kilowatts of power that the airport -- the seventh busiest in India -- uses per day, according to Thomas. Surplus energy is fed into the wider electricity grid.

The big project cost around 620 million rupees ($9.3 million), a sum the airport expects to save in less than six years by not having to pay electricity bills anymore. It also estimates the solar plant will avoid more than 300,000 metric tons of carbon emissions from coal power over the next 25 years.

Couldn't park the car by the roadside to click pics so here're some from the interwebs:







Kudos to the team behind the efforts!