Indian engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm Larsen & Toubro has received a contract to build a 75MW floating solar plant on the Panchet Dam in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.
The project is part of the Ultra Mega Renewable Energy Power Park at the dam, part of an Indian government scheme to accelerate the construction of new clean power projects. Under the project, the government can cover up to 30% of the cost of building the project, and between the programme’s inception in 2014 and 2023, the initiative has supported the construction of 37.9GW of solar capacity.
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The plant will be built by the power transmission and distribution division of Larsen & Toubro, and the company announced that the project will have a total value of between US$333.8 million and US$667.6 million. The work will follow the company’s announcement of its involvement in the sixth phase of the mammoth Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum project in the UAE, which has a capacity of 1.8GW.
While the company did not announce which manufacturer would supply equipment for the project, it noted that it would be built on reservoirs constructed by the Damodar Valley Corporation, which has built a number of dams in the region.
The news is the latest development in the Indian floating solar sector, following state-owned hydroelectric power generation company Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam (SJVN)’s plan to build a new 90MW project in Madhya Pradesh last year. While floating solar is not a significant contributor to the global solar industry in terms of capacity, interest in the power source is growing, with Wood Mackenzie reporting last year that the sector could install more than 6GW of capacity before 2031.
Larsen & Toubro’s work will also help the Indian renewables sector, which, according to the government, met 30.2% of India’s power demands in 2023. Solar alone accounted for 16.1% of electricity demand, compared to coal meeting 49.1% of demand, and the government has sought to address this imbalance in its latest interim budget, with new incentives proposed for the rooftop solar sector in particular.
