The industrial scenario in the Kurnool district has been on the upswing in the past few years and the Kurnool ultra mega solar park in Orvakal has given it a thrust.
The park was built on 5,683 acres of which more than 90% is owned by the government. It is capable of generating 1,000 MW of power. A reservoir of 1,50,000 sq metres was also built which can store four lakh kilolitres of water to clean the solar panels. It also helps replenish the groundwater stock.
The industrial centre officials told The Hindu that 11,000 of the 30,000 acres of uncultivable land available in the Orvakal mandal will be made into the mega industrial hub with an investment of ₹25,000 crore.
About 40 km from Orvakal, another major green energy project is coming up for which land is being acquired right now in Pinnapuram. A hybrid of solar, wind and hydropower, it is capable of generating a whopping 2,750 MW of electricity.
"The Pinnapuram project is innovative in the way it stores power. The plan is to build two reservoirs, an upper reservoir and a lower one. Using the excess energy produced by the solar and the wind farms, water will be pumped from the lower one to the upper one and will be released into the lower reservoir to generate electricity. This would take 550 MW to perform and generate about 1,200 MW and obviates the
need to use batteries for storage. It is set for launch in 2023," said district manager of the New & Renewable Energy Development Corporation of Andhra Pradesh Ltd. (NREDCAP) A. Venugopal Reddy
A pharma park is also coming up at Orvakal and a cement hub in Kolimigundla mandal. The latter is set to come with a Ramco Cement unit with ₹1,200 crore, a Prism Cement unit with ₹2,000 crore and an Ultratech Cement unit with ₹400 crore.
Detailing why Orvakal is being developed, deputy director of industries Madan Mohan Setty said, "Orvakal is mostly barren but is well connected to Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai by road and now it even has an airport. The fact that there is no land available elsewhere in the State makes this prime region for industrial development. The land and labour are significantly less expensive here when compared with traditional industrial hubs like Visakhapatnam."
