India Now Has World’s Largest Solar Plant, Which Can Power 150,000 Homes

And it was built in just eight months.

Call it an environmental ray of sunshine.

India has released images of the world’s largest solar power plant at a single location, Al Jazeera reports.

The plant, which is located in Kamuthi, Tamil Nadu, took an impressive eight months to build. It stretches over 4 square miles of land and has a capacity of 648 megawatts, which could power up to 150,000 homes.

The coolest part?

The plant is cleaned every day by a robotic system that is charged by its own solar panels, according to the outlet.

An aerial view of India’s plant.
An aerial view of India’s plant.
Al Jazeera English

The project cost approximately $679 million and was funded by the Adani Group.

“This is a momentous occasion for the state of Tamil Nadu as well as the entire Country,” Gautam Adani, chairman of the group, said in a press release. “We are extremely happy to dedicate this plant to the nation; a plant of this magnitude reinstates the country’s ambitions of becoming one of the leading green energy producers in the world.”

The plant is part of India’s plan to produce 40 percent of its power from non-fossil fuels by 2030.

India is one of the world’s top 10 greenhouse gas emitters, according to World Resource Institute.

In fact, in early November, there was so much pollution in the air in New Delhi, due to its 25 million inhabitants and their 8.8 million vehicles, that the capital shut down 1,800 schools to prevent a million students from leaving their homes and ingesting deadly smog.

India, however, is not alone in its solar ambitions.

Morocco is another nation that’s investing heavily in renewable energy. When its solar plant Noor 1 is completed in 2018, it is expected to generate 580 megawatts of power for 1.1 million people, 20 hours per day. The plant, which currently has a solar array so massive it’s visible from space, is also expected to reduce the country’s fossil fuel reliance by 2.5 million tons of oil, with enough power to spare and possibly export to Europe.

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