Uttar Pradesh state government has decided to waive off hundred percent land registration fees for setting up solar power plants.
Uttar Pradesh has a solar energy potential of 22,300 MW. The state government has decided to meet the target of 10700 MW by 2022.
Electricity generated by these solar power plants is transferred to the grid, an interconnected network for transferring electricity from producers to consumers. This is part of the state government’s decision to promote private participation in generation of electricity through solar power.
The state has solar projects that are generating 512 MW electricity. Out of this, 280 MW was generated in 2017-18.
“To meet the target of generating 10,700 MW of electricity through solar power the state government will set up around 6000 solar plants,” Brajesh Pathak, additional energy minister in the state government, said recently.
The state government has also decided to provide transmission lines up to 15 km from solar energy plants of 50-150MW capacity. The government has taken this decision considering the fact that transmission of electricity is a costly affair.
Gautam Adani, chairman of the Adani group, has earlier pledged to invest Rs 35,000 crore in Uttar Pradesh in the next five years. A sizable part of this investment will be in solar power plants. At the investors’ summit in February, Gautam Adani had pledged to set up 1000 mw solar power plant and a 500 mw solar park in Uttar Pradesh.
The state government has already come up with a new solar power policy – the Uttar Pradesh Solar Power Policy 2017 — to provide electricity to every village. Solar power will play a major role in fulfilling this objective.