First solar park under MSKVY 2.0 in Maharashtra starts generation to provide day time power to farmers

SANJAY JOG

The first solar park of 3 mw capacity under the MahaYuti government’s ambitious Mukhyamantri Saur Krishi Vahini Yojana 2.0 (MSKVY 2.0) was activated on Thursday in Dhondalgaon village in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district. Nearly 1753 farmers will get 12 hours of uninterrupted power supply during day time from this project.?

The solar energy project which started generation on Thursday is developed on 13-acre public land at Dhondalgaon about 3 Km from the electricity substation of Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL). The power utility had given a letter of award to Megha Engineering on March 7 this year and a power purchase agreement was signed on May 17.?MSEDCL sources said that the company commissioned the project much ahead of the 18 months schedule.?

According to MSEDCL, the project was developed and activated within four and a half months of power purchase agreement. It is connected to 33 KV substation of Dhondalgaon and it will be useful to provide day time power supply to 1753 agriculture pumps connected to 5 electric feeders. Farmers in Dhondalgaon, Nalegaon, Amanatpurwadi and Sanjapurwadi will benefit from this project.

‘’This scheme is the largest distributed renewable energy project in the world. Solar power generation at Dhondalgaon is the beginning of various solar projects being developed as per letter of awards given in March this year to develop solar projects of 9200 MW capacity. Total capacity will be achieved in stages by December 2025,’’ said Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) Lokesh Chandra.

The state government has set a target of development of 9,200 mw of solar energy projects under the Mukhyamantri Saur Krishi Vahini Yojana 2.0 (MSKVY 2.0) to provide day time and reliable power supply to farmers for irrigation.

DCM and energy minister Devendra Fadnavis after taking charge on June 30, 2022 had declared ‘Mission 2025’ to solarise at least 30 percent agriculture feeders by December 2025. After that implementation of MSKVY 2.0 was accelerated.?Fadnavis in March this year had issued letters of award to 95 entities for the installation of solar plants to generate 9,200 MW power, creating 25,000 jobs in Maharashtra. Some of the prominent developers included Reliance Industries, Megha Engineering, Avaada, SJVN Green and Torrent Power.?

State cabinet under chairmanship of CM Eknath Shinde has recently approved expansion of MSKVY 2.0 to increase capacity by 7,000 MW and take it to 16,000 MW so as to provide day time power to 100 percent agriculture pumps.?

‘’In Maharashtra power is supplied in shifts during day and night to agriculture pumps and there is decade old demand to provide only day time power to pumps. MSKVY 2.0 was launched to solve this problem. Under this scheme electricity is generated using solar energy to run agriculture pumps. For this, solar power generation projects are being developed at multiple locations in the state to develop decentralised solar power projects. Apart from solving the problem of farmers getting daytime supply, these projects are also useful in reducing the burden of cross subsidy on industry as electricity will be available at cheaper rate,’’ said the MSEDCL sources.?