Deployed on 350 acres of backwaters, the project features a 5MW floating inverter platform and is anchored to the waterbed using 134 pile foundations bored to a depth of 20 meters.

Tata Power Solar Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of utility Tata Power, said it faced variable water depths, high sea tides, and water salinity concerns during the project’s construction.

With a team of 350 people working on the construction, the company built a scaffolding platform on the water body, while the array was towed into place over 3km, exposing the solar modules to high winds.

A power purchase agreement is already in place, with all power generation from the plant to be used by the Kerala State Electricity Board.

The project is also one of the first by Tata Power Solar to be monitored by round-the-clock video surveillance for security and malfunction detections.

The Kerala project’s commissioning comes after another Tata Power subsidiary, Tata Power Renewables Energy, recently completed a 300MW solar project in Gujarat, India which it claimed is India’s largest single-axis solar tracker system.

India’s state-owned National Hydroelectric Power Corporation has formed a joint venture with the Green Energy Development Corporation of Odisha for the development of 500MW of floating solar projects in the eastern state of Odisha. 

According to pv-tech