Mumbai: CCI club installs rooftop solar plant on Brabourne Stadium

Solar panel plant on the stadium rooftop

The Cricket Club of India (CCI) at Churchgate hopes to hit electricity bills for a six with the inauguration of an 820 KWP rooftop solar plant on the club's Brabourne Stadium. The plant was inaugurated by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Monday evening. Premal Udani CCI president said, "We have a total 2,280 solar panels of 360wp each that have now been installed on the roof of the West and North stands of the stadium."

There is more number crunching from the CCI head honchos, as this is an initiative where figures speak louder than words. Udani added that the per annum capacity is 11.5 lakh units of electricity. We are aiming to save approximately R1.25 crore every year."

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis at the CCI on Monday evening. Pics/Sameer Markande

Our inspiration
Udani said, "The club began to dream big after we ran a pilot project of installing solar panels to generate 45kW and 6,000 LPD solar water heating system in 2016. We wanted to ramp up our effort and this was it. "The Mumbai club was also inspired by the Chinnaswamy cricket stadium in Bangalore, which had a solar power plant installed on the roof a year ago. We thought if Chinnaswamy can do it, why can't we."

The largest
Rakesh Kapoor, chief of CCI's Infrastructure Development & Green Committee, said, "Fadnavis was extremely encouraging about the project. I do not have the exact statistics, but we can say with confidence that this is the world's largest rooftop solar project on a cricket stadium. I stress on cricket, because I would not be able to talk about the other stadiums."

Premal Udani and Rakesh Kapoor

Kapoor said that it was heartening to see that, "the cost of solar panels is going down and efficiency is going up, as technology evolves. Today, we have used the 'dead' space (the roof) used by crows and pigeons and transformed it to a huge money saver, which will contribute to lessening pollution. Only a part of the roof has been used. There are other green projects in the pipeline. Just like sports stars are an inspiration to people, Mumbai's iconic sporting institution, we hope will inspire other infrastructure projects to hop on to the green bandwagon."

Rs 1.25cr
Approximate amount the club is expecting to save every year

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