India now has its first and by extension, only megawatt solar power plant. Isn’t that cool? So what does it mean for you, the rest of the world and mother nature as an entity? For you, the average adult Indian, not much. If the power plant isn’t in your area, unlikely that it will ake its presence felt. For the people of Asansol, it means cleaner air, more development, cheaper electricity, and maybe even lesser power cuts(but that is in dispute. A couple of days of cloudy weather would screw the darn thing). As long as there is decent sunlight, there isn’t much reason for a powercut.

Having said that, let’s dive into the specifics. The plant is located in Jamuria a district of Asansol. The plant has 2MW capacity, enough to power 500 urban homes and 2000 rural ones(figures courtesy TOI). That may not be a lot of houses per city, but well, its not as if its a tiny wee bit of spark. 2MW is serious thunder, guys! It was built on the site of an abandoned thermal power plant. As you might know, thermal power plants produce a hell of a lot of carbon dioxide, among other stuff more dangerous. After all when you burn something, you expect it to try and kick you in the butt for doing that. It should do away with around 7 lakh tonnes of CO2 emissions a day. What does that mean to you? Well, cleaner air, and climate cooling over a couple of years maybe. But it won’t be enough to just make one power plant and sit down at home with a false sense of security. We need more of these to replace some of those ugly soot deposited, thermal power plants. Let  me give you some stats to put things into perspective.

Coal contains carbon(as if you didn’t know that). For Each gram of coal contains approximately 80% carbon and has a calorific value of approximately. So it has around 0.67 moles of carbon.

C + O2 = CO2 

So each mole of carbon produces a mole of Carbon Dioxide. So one gram of coal produces 32 grams of carbon dioxide. The calorific value of carbon is

Now an average urban household takes up around 200 units of electricty a month which is the equivalent of 7.2E10 units of electricy thus consuming  kg of coal, creating kg of Carbon dioxide. By empowering 500 houses, it will save kg of carbon dioxide emissions.

Although, our emissions need to be cut hundred times this amount to have any signuficant amount, it is a good start. The plant is a good example of “inspiring by example”. It will force other countries and well, other states within the country to follow lead. Once they do, we can expect some results.