Bhiwadi Factory — 500 kW Industrial Solar

Project Overview

Rajasthan's industrial heartland goes solar at scale

The Bhiwadi RIICO Industrial Area, located along the Delhi–Jaipur National Highway, is home to over 3,000 manufacturing units producing everything from automotive components to FMCG goods. Among these, a mid-sized precision engineering plant spread across a 4-acre built-up facility faced an energy challenge that was directly eroding its competitive margins. Monthly electricity consumption averaged 62,500 units at the industrial HT tariff of ₹9/unit, generating bills of ₹8.5 lakhs per month — over ₹1 crore annually.

Ms. Deepa Agarwal, the Plant Manager, had already implemented energy-efficient machinery and LED lighting, but the sheer volume of CNC machining, compressor loads, and heat treatment processes meant consumption remained stubbornly high during peak production shifts. The plant operated two shifts, 6 AM to 10 PM, six days a week — a profile almost perfectly aligned with peak solar generation hours.

FGPS Solar's industrial team conducted a comprehensive site study over three days. The factory complex had approximately 22,000 sq ft of south-facing industrial shed roofing across four production bays, with robust RCC and pre-engineered building (PEB) structures capable of supporting the panel load. We proposed a 500 kW system spread across all four shed roofs, using a distributed inverter architecture with ten 50 kW central inverters — each feeding a separate section of the factory's internal LT distribution board. This design eliminated any single point of failure and allowed production to continue uninterrupted even during maintenance of individual inverter segments.

The installation of 1,200 panels was completed in 28 working days, with weekend shutdowns used for critical electrical integration work. The system commissioned in July 2022 generated 68,400 units in its first full month of operation — exceeding the projection by 4%. By eliminating peak-hour grid draw and leveraging 90-day average-based net metering, the plant now pays a net bill of ₹2.9 lakhs against a pre-solar bill of ₹8.5 lakhs.