Commonwealth Games To Be Solar Powered

The Commonwealth Games are a multi-national, multi-sport event that ranks third in the world in size and complexity, after the Olympics and the Asian Games. This year, the Commonwealth Games are being held in India, October 3 through 14, and will feature some sports that are played mainly in Commonwealth countries, including lawn bowls, rugby sevens and netball.

Oh, and this year the Games will utilize electricity generated at least partially by the sun!

The centerpiece of this year's Commonwealth Games will be Thyagaraj Stadium in New Delhi, a brand new facility developed by the Government of Delhi and designed as a model "green" stadium for the world. On top of the stadium will be a brand new one megawatt solar generating station built by RIL Solar Group, part of Reliance Industries.

RIL is in the forefront of solar power for sports venues, having built solar plants in the Khanna tennis complex and having added solar-powered LED street lights and garden lights to the Commonwealth Games Village. The company has also installed other state-of-the-art solar arrays, with power ratings up to 5 megawatts, some of which have been used to power schools, villages, remote telecom towers, and even rural ATMs.

This solar power complex for the 2010 Commonwealth Games will eliminate some 1200 tonnes per year of CO2 emissions that would otherwise have been spewed into the atmosphere, and will be go a long way toward offsetting other anticipated carbon emissions that will be generated by Games-related heating, cooling, transport, and other activities.

For such a large-scale solar facility, construction time is expected to be remarkablely short: just three months. Once in service, the solar plant will generate about 1.4 GWh of electricity per year, enough power to light more than 225 100 watt bulbs all night, every night, all year round. Any of the solar power not used within the stadium complex will automatically be fed into the local grid, in a small way offsetting the need for conventional sources of electric power in other parts of New Delhi.

The solar generating facility on top of Thyagaraj Stadium includes a Kalzip-brand metal roof that covers some 10,000 square meters and incorporates the solar power technology, minimizing the need for specialized mounting structures for the 3640 solar PV modules. The finished complex will have an efficiency rate of 14.1%, among the highest for such installations.

The Commonwealth Games, a premier international sporting event held every four years, involves thousands of athletes from the 54 member nations of the Commonwealth of Nations (formerly the British Commonwealth). Since the Games were initiated in 1930, eighteen different cities in seven different nations have hosted the Games. But until now, none of the venues has been solar powered.

More later ...

Photo credit:  jimmyharris