Feasibility of Solar Power Plant in Kathua District, J & K

Abstract: As the non-renewable sources of energy are depleting day by day, the world is turning towards renewable sources like solar, wind, hydro for fulfilling their power requirement. Solar is one of the major sources of renewable energy which is used for electricity generation in India and its installed capacity has been increased from 2.6 GW to more than 42 GW in the last 7 years and India also acquired 5th position in solar power deployment. Solar power can be harnessed in India using proper techniques providing huge scalability and it also has capability of power generation on distributed basis which helps in additional capacity with short lead times. Jammu and Kashmir has vast amount of solar potential and government is also taking some steps to maximize the use of renewable resources than non- renewable resources in UT but people are still unaware of how to use these renewable resources efficiently. In this paper, the feasibility study of solar power plant installation in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir has been carried out using NASA LARC so that in future maximum number of solar power plants can be installed in Jammu and Kashmir and people can rely on renewable sources. The solar irradiance parameter has been used for assessing the feasibility of this area and the data is collected with the help of NASA LARC website.