India wants to build the world’s largest solar power plant

India has drawn up plans to build a huge solar park. With a capacity of 4GW, the park would be the largest solar power plant in the world. Critics, however, have doubts about the mega project.

The solar park is to be built in northern India, near the Sambhar Salt Lake. Solar panels should be installed on an area of ​​77 square kilometers. The park should have a capacity of 4GW. This would make it more than ten times the size of the largest solar parks currently operational.

The construction of the solar park would take seven years, reports Nature. The cost is estimated at more than 3 billion euros and the financing is provided by six state-owned companies. The Indian government expects that once the park is operational, 4 million tons less CO2 will be emitted annually.

The construction of the giant solar park falls within the ambitions of the Indian government to be able to generate at least 20GW of solar energy by 2020. Critics, however, question the scale of the solar park; not only would the Indian electricity network be very inefficient with a loss of 20 percent, the government should also put more emphasis on decentralized projects. For example, less than half of the villages in India have direct access to the national power grid.