Design and analysis of solar photovoltaic based coal mine reclamation in India

The Gross Domestic Product per capita in India reaches an all-time high of 1750.60 USD in 2015 indirectly shows that per person energy consumption also increases. To conquer the electricity shortage, power generation should also increase in a similar way as utilization increases. Coal will remain the major source of energy and its production quadruple by 2020. In India, coal production is expected to double by the year 2020–25 and 85% coal production would be from opencast mines which require ground breaking and finally cause land degradation. Hence, to meet the demand, it feels necessary that production from new coal mines should start. In order to balance the environmental effects of open mining, the mined out land of the exhausted coal mines should be restored to its pre-mined condition. As the mined land gets degraded this land can be used to construct infrastructure for generating solar power. This will solve the land scarcity problem and also generate local empowerment. In this paper, coal mine reclamation using solar photovoltaic power generation is studied using RETScreen simulation tool. The paper discusses the technical and financial feasibility of 1 MW solar photovoltaic power plant in Dhanbad, Jharkhand of India. This analysis will reflect how best to utilize the idea of placing a solar power generation plant on the site of mines reclamation.