As of 2014, India's largest solar power plant was launched in which state?

2015

As of 2014, India's largest solar power plant was launched in which state?

  1. A.

    Karnataka

  2. B.

    Gujarat

  3. C.

    Madhya Pradesh

  4. D.

    Jharkhand

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C

India's large-scale solar capacity built up after the 2010 National Solar Mission takes two distinct forms: a single-owner solar power plant, built and commissioned as one project by one company, and a solar park, a shared site where a state agency allots plots to many separate developers whose individually commissioned plants are added together to quote the park's total capacity. A question asking for the largest solar power plant is asking about the first kind — one facility, not a multi-developer park's combined total.

As of 2014, the single-site, single-developer plant behind "largest solar power plant" is the Welspun Solar MP Project at Neemuch in Madhya Pradesh: a 151 MW facility built by one company and inaugurated on 27 February 2014, widely reported at the time as India's largest single solar power plant. That is the fact this TPSC CMIS 2015 question is targeting.

  • Gujarat's Charanka Solar Park in Patan district is a multi-developer park: 214 MW had been commissioned there by April 2012, later expanding to about 730 MW across 36 developers — a combined park total, not one plant.

  • Karnataka's Pavagada Solar Park in Tumkur district reached about 2,050 MW, but only after its first phase was commissioned in January 2018 — years after this question's exam year, and again a multi-developer park rather than a single plant.

  • Jharkhand's solar ambitions were only formalised in its 2015 state policy, which targeted about 2,650 MW of capacity by 2020; no single plant of comparable scale existed there at the time.

So among the states offered, Madhya Pradesh is where India's largest single solar power plant referenced by this question was launched.

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