The Indian Institute of Management, Shillong being a strong promoter of sustainable-energy has come up with a novel idea to save its daily consumption of energy. It has placed solar panels in its campus. The solar panels which have a capacity of 50 KW are installed by IIM Shillong authorities in collaboration with the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. These panels will supply power to the entire campus including the administrative building, classrooms, 72 hostel rooms, guest houses, mess and dining halls – a total of 215 people live on the IIM Shillong campus at any point of time.

The solar panels are placed on top of the new boys hostel in the campus. And they are geographically placed in a way that they face early sunrise and so energy can be tapped from 4:40 am to 5:30 pm in the evening. The installation of solar panels saves a lot of electricity and by not going for conventional methods of electricity-generation of fossil fuels, the entire set-up is eco-friendly and helps to maintain the serenity of the place, said Keshav Sridhar member of student PRO cell. He added that Shillong, being cold for most parts of the year does not use air-conditioners, so the electricity consumption is anyway low compared to the other b-schools.” However, hot water is used in large quantities for bathing purposes because of the cold weather. Since we depend on hot water so much, this solar facility will greatly help,” Keshav added.

On an average, these solar panels will save 1,50, 000 units of electricity per year. To generate that much of electricity from a coal based power plant, 1.5 tons of coal will be required which will release some 1.5 tons of CO2 per year, Keshav told PaGaLGuY. The solar panels were much talked about at the recently held International Conference on Energy Sustainability, held at IIM Shillong and the concept was also well received by the local community of Shillong, according to Keshav.