Solar trees produce up to ten times more power while requiring only 1% of the land required for traditional PV systems. These can also efficiently collect off-peak sunshine.

These trees will be an integral part of solar cities planned across the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The Uttar Pradesh government proposes to develop 20 cities of the State as ‘Solar Cities’ with emphasis on solar rooftops and other allied off-grid solar installations. 

Cities selected are Lucknow, Kanpur, Prayagraj, Agra, Varanasi, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Bareilly, Aligarh, Moradabad, Saharanpur, Gorakhpur, Noida, Firozabad, Jhansi, Muzaffarnagar, Mathura, Ayodhya, Azamgarh, and Mirzapur. 

The solar cities will host 1 kW solar trees with LED street lighting systems and 2.5 kW solar trees for illumination of gardens and parks. The Uttar Pradesh New & Renewable Energy Development Agency (UPNEDA) has issued a tender to supply and install these systems for 16 of the proposed solar cities. 

While solar trees are not a new phenomenon globally, Guinness World Records has confirmed the world’s largest solar tree has been installed in India at the Centre of Excellence for Farm Machinery, Ludhiana, in Punjab. The tree, with 309.83m2 of solar panel surface, was constructed by the Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute, part of the government’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

The structure has a generation capacity of 53.6kWp and can generate an estimated 160-200kWh per day.