In line with Tata Group’s philosophy to promote green manufacturing, Tata Motors and Tata Power on Friday jointly inaugurated India’s largest grid-synchronised solar carport at the Tata Motors car plant at Chikhali in Pune.
The 6.2 MWp (Megawatt peak) solar carport installed by Tata Power will generate 86.4 lakh kWh of electricity per year and is estimated to reduce 7,000 tons of carbon emission annually and 1.6 lakh tons over its lifecycle.
Spanning over 30,000 square meters, the carport will not only generate green power, but will also provide covered parking for finished cars in the plant.
Envisioned as part of its net zero carbon goal for 2039, Tata Motors had entered into a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Tata Power on August 31, 2020.
Despite the challenges of Covid-19, both companies successfully managed to develop this massive carport infrastructure in a record time of around nine months.
On the launch of the project Shailesh Chandra, president, Passenger Vehicle Business Unit, Tata Motors said, “At Tata Motors, we have consciously anchored sustainability in every aspect of our business by striving for more meaningful ways to reduce our impact on the planet, whilst providing exciting products and sustainable solutions to our customers. We have always been conscious of the need to conserve energy and are committed towards achieving 100 per cent renewable energy sources for all our operations. Our partnership with Tata Power to deploy India’s largest solar carport at our car plant in Pune is a step in that direction.”
Praveer Sinha, CEO and managing director of Tata Power said, “As one Tata initiative, we are proud to partner with Tata Motors and inaugurate India’s largest solar carport. Our partnership is a testament to our collective efforts to lower the carbon footprint and provide innovative and future-focused green energy solutions. We will continue to explore new ways to harness clean resources and offer them to our partners and customers.”
Being a signatory of the RE100 (a global corporate renewable energy initiative) Tata Motors uses 100 per cent renewable power and has taken several strides towards achieving this goal by progressively increasing the proportion of renewable energy used in its operations.
In FY20, the company generated 88.71 million kWh of renewable electricity which is over 21 per cent of its total power consumption (up from 16% in FY19).
This helped prevent the equivalent of 72,739 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The company further intends to source renewable energy more rigorously to meet its aspiration of sourcing 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030.
Significantly, Tata Power comes with a successful background of executing multiple large solar solutions including the world’s largest rooftop (16MW) at a single location at Radhasoami Satsang Beas , Amritsar ; 2.67 MW at Cochin International Airport; world’s largest solar powered cricket stadium-Cricket Club of India (CCI) with 820.8 kWp capacity; unique installation of solar vertical farm (120kW) at Dell Technologies at Bangalore and 1.4MW floating solar at Tata Chemicals, Nellore.
In addition, Tata Power is carrying out an extensive pan-India residential rooftop program to make people aware of the benefits of savings through solar energy.