The Premier Energies photovoltaic facility at Electronic City in Telangana is a state-of-the-art facility for manufacturing solar modules and solar cells. This is the second largest facility in India and the largest in South India. This facility is spread over 25 acre with 250,000 sq ft of manufacturing area including a 80,000 sq ft clean room and a host of utilities including a gas, chemical and water treatment plant. This facility has become the first solar cell and module manufacturing facility in India to be awarded the LEED Gold certification. Sudhir Reddy, Director, Premier Energies, tells CWDB more. During construction The construction of this plant had started just before COVID-19 in 2020 – it finished in 2021. This was the most difficult period and quite a challenge. The entire construction is based on the PEB construction technique. The structure has been optimised for natural air ventilation and designed to be highly water and energy-efficient and minimise the industrial waste generated. Additionally, we identified recyclers and industries that use construction waste in their projects. We worked with recyclers to dispose of cement bags for alternate use. Packing material was given to specific paper and cardboard recyclers. Sustainable interventions Solar energy is one of the cleanest energy options available and, thus, a plant manufacturing solar panels should adhere to the best sustainable practices. With this in mind, Premier embarked on creating a sustainable and environment-friendly industrial setup. The plant consumes roughly about 750 kld water and is equipped with a zero liquid discharge system that provides 90 per cent recovery. We have a 5,000 kl rainwater storage tank that is used to store rainwater and use it in place of raw water from the municipality. Further, we have a sewage treatment plant (STP) to recover water from the sewage. The facility has a 6.5 mw solar power plant on the rooftop that caters to about 50 per cent of the daytime consumption of the facility. All motors in the HVAC and water treatment are IE3 motors, which are highly energy-efficient. Water and waste-efficiency In our plant, we give the utmost importance to water management. In fact, we have designed and built a custom supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) for water management. The entire operation of receiving raw water, transfer of raw water into various storage tanks and the usage of various sources of water – raw water, rain water and STP-treated water – are managed automatically to minimise and optimise the use of raw water from the municipality. Our daily consumption of water is about 750 kl. We recycle all the water used in the facility and recover 90 per cent of the water for reuse in the facility – save the 10 per cent for evaporation losses. This is a zero liquid discharge facility and we are proud of it. Power-efficiency On the power efficiency front, we have taken several measures. We have used automatic power factor correction relay (APFCR) panels for power factor correcting. We maintain 0.99 power factor (PF) at the plant level. We also use variable-frequency drives (VFD) on compressors and pumps where the load is variable. We used special controllers provided by Climaveneta to optimise the chillers’ performance and reduce power consumption. In conclusion Some of these sustainable green building features we have implemented provide a two-year return on investment. It is also about cost upfront versus operation costs. We just need to be smart about it and plan ahead. Premier Energies has aimed to design energy-conscious net-zero buildings by 2025 to produce and supply energy with minimal consumption and zero carbon emissions. To that extent, currently we are catering to 20 per cent of our consumption from the rooftop solar power plant. We are evaluating various options to reduce the energy consumed at various points, whether it is by tools or the HVAC system. We are also looking at procuring green energy in the open market to transition to net zero. Further, we are looking to a policy change in the state of Telangana for us to be able to procure green power in the open market. On the expansion front, we are doubling our capacity at the existing location from the current 1 gw manufacturing to 2 gw. This expansion is also being built in accordance with all green building norms.