1) Tata Power commissions 24 MW wind farm in Gujarat
- Tata Power, India’s largest integrated power company, on 29th April announced the successful commissioning of a 24-megawatt (MW) wind farm at Rojmal in Gujarat, through its subsidiary Tata Power Renewable Energy Ltd (TPREL), increasing its total operational capacity in this segment to 511 MW. The total capacity of this wind power project is 54 MW. Tata Power’s total installed capacity stands at 8,750 MW and the clean and renewable energy capacity at 1,383 MW.
- The 24-MW wind capacity is expected to generate nearly 52 million units per year. Tata Power’s wind farms are located across leading wind resource States including Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
- The company is evaluating growth opportunities in these States, as also in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, through organic, and inorganic means as it continues to pursue avenues to add clean and renewable energy generation capacities to increase its portfolio, Anil Sardana, MD and CEO, said in a statement here.
- TPREL’s Rojmal wind farm utilizes wind turbines from Inox Wind Ltd, and sells the power to Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam LTd (GUVNL) under the Gujarat Wind Policy, 2013. The company also has projects under development in Rajasthan and Maharashtra.
- Tata Power has six of its renewable energy projects registered under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) programme of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
2) Dinosaur fossil discovered in China
- A bat-like dinosaur has been unearthed in China that had wings made of skin rather than feathers, showing there may have been different ways of flying before the emergence of birds.
- The tiny dinosaur discovered by a local farmer from Jurassic rocks in northeast China has been named Yi qi, which means "strange wing" in Mandarin. It belongs to a group of dinosaurs with long hands called Scansoriopterygids that thrived 160 million years ago and so far are known only to be from China. Scansoriopterygids are closely related to small, primitive birds such as the Archaeopteryx, but there was previously no evidence that they could take to the air.
- The researchers expect their reconstruction of the wings of Yi qi to be controversial, but say their theory is the best interpretation based on the available evidence.
- Recent discoveries including dinosaurs with plumage and dinosaur eggs that looked a lot like bird eggs helped settle the centuries-old question over the origins of birds. Most palaeontologists now believe birds evolved some 150 million years ago from a group of dinosaurs known as maniraptoran the ropods - mostly small meat-eating dinosaurs that include Velociraptor.
3) Largest Photo Voltaic Cell in MP
- The Madhya Pradesh Cabinet gave its approval to build 750 megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic (SPV) plant at Gurh tehsil in Rewa district. The plant, to be developed in three phases of 250 MW, once completed will become the world’s largest solar power plant. At present, the largest SPV plant is the Topaz Solar Farm (550 MW) in California’s San Luis Obispo county, US, which was commissioned in 2014.