Gujarat Solar PV plant Performance – Konark, Welspun and Palace Solar take top honours among 50 plants

In May 2013, RESolve released a whitepaper with the ranking of solar projects in Gujarat(click here) based on the energy generation data from the Gujarat SLDC for the calendar year 2012(January 2012 to December 12). Based on the feedback received from the industry, we have modified the ranking from Calender year to Financial year and are very glad to share the updated results.
In this whitepaper, a total of 50 plants totaling 665.64 MW have been ranked based on their annual yield(MWh/MW) for the financial year 2012-13(April 2012 to March 2013). All these plants have been operational for at least 1 year. Of these 50 plants, 15 plants are located in Charanka Solar Park and 35 plants outside Charanka. There is an overall ranking of the 50 plants and a separate ranking each, for plants in Charanka and outside Charanka.
Konark Gujarat PV Pvt Ltd had the overall highest total annual generation of 1872 MWh/MW/Year. Unity Power(Welspun) came very close at 1865 MWh/MW/Year and was followed by Mono Steel(India) Ltd at 1864 MWh/MW/Year. It is important to note that Konark Gujarat PV Pvt Ltd and Mono Steel(India) Ltd had seasonal tilt configuration, while the Unity Power(Welspun) project had a fixed tilt configuration. In other words, Unity Power(Welspun) was the highest ranking plant among plants with fixed tilt.
Among the 15 plants operational in Charanka, Palace Solar(1745 MWh/MW/Year), NKG Infrastructure Ltd(1731 MWh/MW/Year) and Sun Clean Renewable Pvt Ltd(1723 MWh/MW/Year) were the top performing plants.
In this whitepaper, the configurations of a majority of the plants have also been highlighted. The details include module type(Crystalline Silicon Vs Thin Film), module make(First Solar, Solar Frontier, Tata BP, Sharp, Waaree, Vikram Solar), Inverter type(Power One, SMA, etc), Tilt(Fixed vs seasonal or single/dual axis) and the name of the EPC contracto. A comparison of the performance of Crystalline Silicon Vs Thin Films is also available in the whitepaper.
One very interesting insight that can be drawn from the performance ranking is that the right component selection is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for the optimal performance of a plant. An example of the same is available in the whitepaper.
The information about components and EPCs has been collated based on interviews with several industry stakeholders and publically available sources. We have taken utmost care to verify the authenticity of in­formation, but it is likely that some of the information need to be corrected. In case you come across such information, please let us know and we will be more than happy to correct them
We hope you find the performance ranking of the plants interesting and useful. Please share your comments, feedbacks or criticisms at madhavan@re-solve.in and/or hari@re-solve.in.  Your inputs will help us improve the next edition of the performance ranking.
Click on the image to download it.

 
Happy reading!!
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