Tirupati airport is solar-powered now; Hubballi, Kadapa may be next.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has inaugurated the 1-MWp solar plant at Tirupati’s Renigunta International Airport. The plant was commissioned by distributed solar developer Fourth Partner Energy.

With this, the temple town joins the league of South India’s solar-powered airports at, Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Vijayawada.

AAI wants to ensure that that Tirupati, along with other airports in South India, operates completely on solar power within three years. It has proposed commissioning 8 MWp plants at Hubballi and Kadapa airports shortly.

Tirupati’s ground-mounted solar plant has been installed across four acres of land, parallel to the airport runway and its isolation bay. “Tirupati enjoys bright, sunny weather most of the year; the usability of solar power increases at daytime when the plant can meet over 75 per cent of required electricity; at night, this airport is currently non-operational. Fourth Partner Energy ensured a thorough and efficient execution of this project. Switching to solar power under this company’s expertise was a great experience,” added S Suresh, Airport Director at Renigunta, Tirupati.

Expansion

AAI has also provisioned for expansion of the airport. It plans to to soon make it operational 24x7; following which Fourth Partner Energy will scale up the power generated from the solar plant. Excess power generated at Tirupati airport will then be routed back to the national grid via net metering, in line with Andhra Pradesh’s renewable energy policy.

Vivek Subramanian, Co-founder and CEO at Fourth Partner, said, “The Tirupati airport solar installation was quite challenging, as part of the site is parallel to the runway -- for this we had to obtain special construction permits and also incorporate design changes to eliminate the ‘glare effect’. Andhra Pradesh aims to add 5 GWp of solar capacity over the next five years and Fourth Partner is looking forward to helping the State achieve this target.”

HBL