Chilla Canal, India

2011

In 2011 New Energy commissioned its first project outside of North America with a 50 kW pilot plant in Northern India. The project was for DLZ Power Private Limited (DLZ) and consisted of two 25 kW systems installed in a canal.

The Chilla Canal is a power plant supply canal that originates on the Ganges River and carries water 14 km to a 140 MW hydropower plant. It is situated near Dehradun within the Rajaji National Park in the state of Uttarakhand. This is a concrete lined trapezoidal canal designed to transport up to 545 cubic meters of water per second to the existing hydroelectric power plant. Water within the canal is also used for irrigation purposes within the region.

The Chilla project presented special challenges not experienced before. The electrical grid at this northern location was weak and unstable, often going down several times a day. Ambient temperatures were as high as 45 C causing the equipment to run hotter than normal. The frequent starts and stops of the systems due to grid outages resulted in a high degree of strain on system components, so it was decided to incorporate electrical braking in parallel with mechanical braking, as well as a change in control logic so that the units were put in an idle mode when the grid was down by dumping generated energy through a resistor bank. In future it would also be possible to incorporate a secondary storage facility to capture the lost energy during the grid outage.

The Chilla project has given us a wealth of experience in understanding how our equipment responds under very different operating conditions, with access to a very different workforce with limited access to equipment, in a geographically distant location.