Renewable Energy Corporation (REC), a solar power company based in Norway, has agreed to supply 25,720 REC Peak Energy Series solar panels to power the printing of Ramoji Group-owned Telugu newspaper – Eenadu – in Andhra Pradesh state of India.
Totalling 6.5 MWp capacity, the ground-mounted tracker system will generate 12,289,500 kWh of clean, green electricity each year.
Eenadu general manager G Rajendra Babu said that the company, being a daily newspaper, is dependent on stable and viable grid.
“To be more independent, we decided to invest in solar energy or more specifically, in captive solar consumption,” explained Babu.
“With increasing electricity costs on the one hand and the intermittent energy supply on the other, we can save a lot of money by using the energy produced by the solar installation itself and at the same time fulfill our corporate environmental policy.”
The plant, being built by Indian EPC Photon Energy Systems, will be completed by the end of September 2013.
REC India managing director Shailendra Mohan Bebortha noted: “Solar-generated power for captive consumption not only guards businesses against increasing electricity prices, it also provides good investment opportunity. We see self-consumption as a key business model for solar in India because it doesn’t depend on incentive schemes, has no restrictions on system sizes, has low level of bureaucracy and makes industrial customers independent from fluctuations in energy prices.”