KANNUR: The Solar Radiation Resource Assessment (SRRA) Station, one of the two such stations established in the state, started functioning in the Government Engineering College here.
The station, one of the 115 solar radiation data collection centres across the country, automatically transmits data using General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) to the Centre for Wind Energy Technology, Chennai.
The Solar Radiation Resource Assessment Station was established by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), as part of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission launched in 2010 with an aim to make India a superpower in solar power generation by 2022, said Dr T D John, Head of Mechanical Engineering Department, Govt Engineering College, Kannur.
Along with feeding data on solar radiation every 10 minutes, the Solar Radiation Resource Assessment station would also quantify other weather parameters with a view to develop Solar Atlas of India.
The station consists of two towers of 1.5 m and 6 m tall each.
One of the tower houses a Solar Tracker equipped with Pyranometer, Pyranometer with shaded ring and Pyrheliometer to measure solar parameters, such as global, diffused and direct radiation.
The 6-m tall tower consists of instruments measuring rainfall, ambient temperature, atmospheric pressure, relative humidity, wind speed and direction.
The station is totally powered by 160-watt solar photovoltaic panels and consists of 13 instruments that record 37 parameters.
“The students and researchers of Govt Engineering College would be allowed free access to the voluminous data of the Solar Radiation Resource Assessment project,” said Dr John.
The researchers of the college can have free access to the whole data generated by the project across the country, which would open up new vistas for research, he opined.
Dr G Giridhar, director, SRRA project, MNRE and Dr V Syam Prakash, Principal, Govt College of Engineering, Kannur, signed a Memorandum Of Understanding on the establishment of the station last week here.