WORLD'S LARGEST SOLAR STEAM COOKING SYSTEM AT TIRUPATI
The world's largest
solar steam cooking system has been installed by the Tirumala
Tirupathi Devasthanam (TTD) at Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh. The
system has been installed by M/s Gadhia Solar energy Systems,
Valsad under a demonstration scheme of the Ministry of Non-Conventional
Energy Sources with almost 50 per cent financial support. Balance
of the cost has been borne by the TTD trust. The system has a
capacity to prepare food for 15000 people per day and employs
automatic tracking solar dish concentrators, which convert water
into high pressure steam. The steam thus generated is being used
for cooking purposes in the kitchen of TTD. It has been hooked
up with the existing boiler working on diesel so as to make the
system reliable for different climatic conditions.
The system has been
designed to generate over 4000 kgs of steam/day which is sufficient
to cook two meals for around 15,000 persons. It is modular in
nature and consists of 106 automatic tracked parabolic concentrators
arranged in series and parallel combination, each of 9.2 sq. meter
reflector area. Each unit of concentrators is connected to a central
stem pipeline going to the kitchen. The system is made of indigenous
components and the reflectors are of acrylic mirrors having reflectivity
over 75 per cent. The installation was completed during September
2002 and was inaugurated by the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh
in October 2002. The system is expected to save around 1,18,000
litres of diesel per year.
The total cost of
the system is about Rs.110 lakh, which includes back up boiler,
utensils and annual maintenance contract for five years. A total
of six such systems have been installed in the country. This technology
could be very useful at places where cooking is done on a very
large scale.
