World’s first fully solar-powered airport
In 2018 Cochin International Airport in India, won the highest environmental honor instituted by United Nations. Since its entire operations are powered by solar energy, the biggest and busiest airport of Kerala state in India, and the fourth busiest airport in India in terms of international traffic, Cochin International Airport became the world’s first fully solar-powered airport to receive the Champion of Earth Prize -2018 by UNEP
Indias largest agrivoltaic project
The Cochin International Airport is now achieved another milestone in sustainable development with the airport’s agri-voltaic farming scaled up to 20 acres, the largest agrivoltaic project in India
https://youtu.be/enWmrUCB8_I
The airport company had earlier experimented with organic farming on one of its solar plants on the premises of the airport. It started the process of scaling up the farming practice by incorporating the modern method of Agricultural Photovoltaic (agri-voltaic) procedure in July 2021.
From the 53 acres of organic vegetable farm, 20 acres have been used for agri-voltaic practice. vegetables such as yam, long yard bean, drumstick, mountain ginger, turmeric, cabbage, cauliflower, and green chili are grown.
The water used to clean the panels is reused to irrigate the crops. The crops will help to modify the micro-climates underneath PV modules by reducing the temperature, which results in increasing efficiency in power generation. Moreover, the crop coverage in between PV arrays will check the erosion of soil and thus reduce the dust deposit on the PV module.
Many rooftop solar panel installations in Kerala are inspired by these green enrgy initatives by CIAL