After the commissioning of solar photovoltaic (SPV) power plants at educational institutes and Government offices’ buildings in Chandigarh, the UT Science & Technology is all set to widen the ambit of initiatives under the ambitious model solar city project.

Continuing the energy conservation initiatives, the Science & Technology Department (S&T) Department has chalked out a plan to commission SPV power plants at Inter State Bus Terminal (ISBT) Sector 17 and ISBT Sector 43 here.A total of 800 KWp capacity SPV power plants would be installed at three different locations of Chandigarh including ISBT-17, ISBT-43 and Indian Reserve Battalion (IRB) Complex, Sarangpur here.

At present, a 200 KWp SPV power plant is already commissioned at IRB Complex, Sarangpur.While talking to The Pioneer, Santosh Kumar, Director, UT Science & Technology Department said, “The department has proposed to commission 200 KWp SPV power plant at ISBT 43, 300 KWp solar power plant at ISBT-17 and another 300 KWp solar power plant at IRB Complex.”

The ISBT-Sector 17 and ISBT-Sector 43 here provides bus services to the general public for within the city, sub urban area and in adjoining states i.e. Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan among other places.Santosh Kumar said, “Around Rs6 crore is likely to be spent for the installation of rooftop grid interactive SPV power plants of overall capacity of 800 KWp at three different locations here.”

“The S&T Department has planned to cover all Government buildings in Chandigarh under the model solar city project. While the process of commissioning of solar power plants at educational institutions and Government offices is underway, the planning is in progress to cover the tourist spots and other prominent places of Chandigarh under the model solar city project,” he added.

Giving details of solar projects in the city, the S & T Director added, “Rooftop grid interactive SPV plants of overall capacity 810 KWp on 15 schools and 550 KWp on 17 schools is already under progress. Besides, 2 MWp SPV plants on different buildings were installed in Chandigarh and another 5 MWp SPV plant is under installation.”

The UT S & T Department is also working on a plan to install SPV power plants in car parking lots of Chandigarh and has already initiated the process to identify parking lots and capacity of SPV power plants required at such places.Notably, the solar master plan to make Chandigarh a model solar city, which has been approved by the Centre, has set a target of 5 MW electricity generation by 2015 and 10 MW by 2018 through roof top solar power plants.

The SPV power plant projects are being executed by CREST (Chandigarh Renewal Energy, Science & Technology Promotion Society) under the aegis of Chandigarh S & T Department.