AGARTALA, February 4 (TIWN): The much awaited North East India’s largest SOLAR power plant today successfully commissioned at Monarchak. Monarchak Solar power plant currently generating 600 KW of power while the Monarchak is expecting to take the production to 1.6 MW to 1.8 MW by today evening. As part of clean development mechanism at Monarchak, the NEEPCO has installed the first such initiative in the region to tap solar power. Talking to TIWN today NEEPCO Project Head S R Biswas said that the North East’s largest solar power plant installed at Monarchak under Sonamura sub division today successfully commissioned power generation with at least 600 KW in firstphase. “We are expecting more 1.6 MW to 1.8 MW of power from the newly installed solar power plant” Biswas told to TIWN. He further informed that the solar power plant has already connected its power with the state power grid. The TSECL, a state govt. owned enterprise will buy the entire solar power energy to be produced from the Monarchak plant.

The entire project for the development of the solar power plant cost at around Rs. 40 Crores.  

The solar power energy will be available only in the day time.

Adding to that he said the NEEPCO Shillong electrical inspector has inspected the solar power plant site on Tuesday while the Tripura State Electricity Corporation Ltd. (TSECL) has completed the extension of their power evacuation line from Kathalia Rabindranagar area with back charging the evacuation line. Monarchak NEEPCO solar power plant will generate power thorough the line connecting from Rabindranagar transmission line.

According to the official sources, to tap the immense potential of non-conventional sources of energy of Northeast, NEEPCO has initiated another 5 MW solar power project at Lanka of Assam and 2 MW capacity of windmill in Arunachal Pradesh besides, producing conventional energy in the region. Solar power is the conversion of sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV), or indirectly using concentrated solar power (CSP). Concentrated solar powersystems use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam. Photovoltaics convert light into electric current using the photovoltaic effect. Commercial concentrated solar power plants were first developed in the 1980s.

However it is also mentionable here that the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Limited (NEEPCO) is embarking on a plan to generate at least 1500MW power from non-conventional sources of energy, especially by tapping solar power and wind, in the next five years.