A Rs 80 crore contract for the construction of a 22 MW floating solar plant on the Bhakra Nangal dam reservoir has been awarded to Hartek Solar, a subsidiary of the Chandigarh-based Hartek business.  

“When commissioned in March 2024, this would be North India’s largest floating solar plant,” Hartek Solar’s Founder and CEO, Simarpreet Singh, told businessline recently.

A unique feature of the project, which also presents a challenge, is that the solar plant is built on flowing water, he said. The plant will be owned by SJVN Ltd, a utility, which will sell the power to the Bhakra Beas Management Board.

Hartek Solar is one of the leading solar EPC companies, having built about 5 GW of solar plants till date, many of them rooftop plants. It has also built a 2 MW floating solar plant on a water tank in Chandigarh. “We could complete the project in 51 days,” Singh said.

A floating solar project would cost between Rs 5.5 crore and Rs 6 crore per MW — between 20 and 30 per cent higher than ground-mounted, utility-scale solar projects.