Chennai readies to give country its solar atlas

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Chennai is readying to give India its solar atlas, which will have details on radiation of solar energy in various cities in the country.

A team of experts set up by the ministry of new and renewable energy are sitting in Chennai and updating the data of radiation of solar energy in 50 existing automatic solar radiation monitoring centers, including seven in Tamil Nadu, starting from Ladhak in Kashmir to Chitradurga in Karnataka. Sixty more data centres would be set up shortly.

The data in the atlas would be useful for both the government and commercial investors, who could learn about the potential solar zones in India and come up with specific projects to tap the energy, says G. Giridhar, director of the solar radiation assessment cell in Chennai.

The ministry is finalising the proposal to sell the solar data to corporates who would like to set up renewable energy business houses such as solar farms in India.

“The ministry aims to produce 20,000 mega watt of electricity through renewable energy sources in 2020.

This solar census project has the ground data about 32 weather parameters, including humidity, ambient temperature. This is the first of its kind of its project in the world to use solar spots to assess the potential zones,” Giridhar said.

The automatic centers in the country would feed the data collected from all the centers to the server in Chennai, he said.

“Using GPS we update 32 weather parameters including humidity, ambient temperature and radiation. At the click of the mouse, the Chennai office provides the graphs of solar radiation in all major cities,” he said.
The five-year project, which started in 2011, has been coordinated by TEDA (Tamil Nadu Energy Development Agency), TNEB (Tamil Nadu Electricity Board) and the renewable energy ministry.