I visited Neyveli, which is the Lignite center in Tamil Nadu, generating enough electricity for 3 major states in India. Neyveli Lignite Corporation is operated by the central government, and the thermal operations are governed by the decisions made by NLC and the central government. They have mines to mine Lignite and use that for producing electricity. There is enough facility available to create more mines and continue this for another 100 years but they won't be doing it because there is already a great resistance from the local people and villages nearby.
Moving to an alternative option is the next big thing to do. Currently, the government is experimenting with the feasibility of power generation through solar panels instead of using a Thermal power station. Since Neyveli is well known for power generation, they are making use of the barren land over there to install solar panels and produce electricity. They have already spent a lot of money on setting up solar farms and generating a lot of electricity. Even though solar is free to generate, there is an installation cost involved, and one of the biggest challenges is that it consumes a big space, and we cannot do anything else in that land if used for installing solar panels.
I was able to see a few solar farms over there while travelling in my car, and someone said that they are gradually increasing production by introducing more and more solar farms. But when I had a look at the farms, I noticed that the farms looked good but there is no facility available to clean those solar panels. I was able to see that some panels have been fully covered with dust and appear white. The whole surface of the panel is covered with dust. Since these panels are installed in a tightly packed farm, there is no facility available to go and clean the panels. I'm not sure if anyone has been employed to clean those panels regularly.
Other countries cleaning the solar panels
It is very important to note that the efficiency of the panels are greatly improved if the panels are cleaned regularly. If we don't clean it regularly, then we will not be able to generate enough electricity from it, and the point of having the panel itself will not be met and it will end up in a loss. Recently, I saw some videos in YouTube showing how other countries are handing this problem. There are employees who manually go and clean these solar panels regularly and their jobs is to keep the panels clean.
In countries where solar panels are installed in deserts, it is very common to see sand covering the panels. It can be hard for any human being to keep cleaning those panels regularly. They have come up with solutions where they have a self cleaning module installed on top of the panel itself that keeps moving from left to right, cleaning the surface. Good thing about this is that those robots are also operated with the help of solar panels. There will still be a need for human intervention to clean the Robot's solar panel, which is done as a separate task and not as frequently as cleaning the other panels.
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