Written by PPL Newsroom• October 1, 2026• 9:18 am• Innovation

Kerala’s Cochin Airport, first to run fully on solar, now has 50 MWp of capacity

Eleven years after going power-neutral, Cochin International Airport generates more electricity than it uses and has added hydropower and farming under its panels.

Cochin International Airport in Kerala is still billed as the world’s first fully solar-powered airport, and it has kept growing since that milestone. It earned the title in 2015 and now has 50 MWp of installed solar capacity. The airport operator, Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL), has since added hydropower and is working on cutting emissions from aircraft on the ground.

How the airport got there

The project began as a cost-saving experiment. Airport officials were looking for ways to reduce rising electricity bills. CIAL started in 2013 with a 100 kWp pilot plant, and managing director V.J. Kurian said a rooftop trial on Terminal One ran for a year before the team judged it safe to scale up.

The turning point came in August 2015. A 12 MWp plant of more than 46,000 panels was built across 45 acres, and the airport became entirely powered by solar energy. A “fully solar-powered” airport here does not mean it runs on batteries. Under a power-banking arrangement with the Kerala State Electricity Board, CIAL feeds its daytime output into the grid and draws power back when needed.

The numbers today

The 12 MWp plant at Payyannur took cumulative capacity to 50 MWp. At that point, CIAL’s solar plants generated two lakh units a day, against daily consumption of 1.6 lakh units. A lakh is 100,000, so the airport produces roughly a quarter more than it needs.

CIAL says it has produced a cumulative 25 crore units of green power, offsetting 1,60,000 metric tonnes of carbon emissions. That is 250 million units. The operator also reports that vegetables grown between the panels have so far yielded about 90 metric tonnes without pesticides.

The plant has performed as designed. A peer-reviewed study of the first 12 MWp plant, using data from September 2015 to September 2016, found an average performance ratio of 86.56% and a capacity utilisation factor of 20.12%. In plain terms, the plant turned sunshine into usable power efficiently, and it ran at about a fifth of its maximum possible output over the year. That is typical for solar plants because of night and cloud cover.

What this means for India

Cochin Airport shows that a large, busy Indian airport can meet its power needs from solar, using land it already owns and an arrangement with the state grid. The UN gave CIAL its Champions of the Earth prize in 2018, and its managing director has said airport authorities from Liberia and Vietnam have visited. Other Indian airports, with open land, large roofs and car parks, can study the model. The key lesson is the grid-banking arrangement, which replaces costly batteries.

What comes next

CIAL has widened its approach beyond panels. Its portfolio now includes a 4.5 MW hydroelectric project at Arippara in Kozhikode district. In September 2026, Onmanorama reported on a project to power parked aircraft using bridge-mounted equipment, which fits the airport’s long-standing focus on renewable energy. Powering aircraft on the ground from the airport’s own supply could reduce emissions at the gate.

The original 2015 claim is now more than a decade old. The airport’s real test is whether it keeps adding clean capacity as passenger numbers and terminal space grow. Its record so far suggests it plans to.