Gandhinagar, Jan 22 : Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi Saturday inaugurated a 1 MW solar power plant here, commissioned in a record 105 days at a cost of Rs.15 crore.

"The plant will generate around 15 lakh units of power per year, enough to light 1,500 houses and is expected to lessen carbon emission by 1,500 tonnes," he said while speaking on the occasion.

Modi made clear his resolve to make Gandhinagar a solar city and Gujarat the solar capital of the world.

Set up near the Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University campus here, the solar power plant has been designed and constructed by global solar energy service provider SunEdison.

"We will also be responsible for operating the plant and for training personnel at the Gujarat Energy Research and Management Institute (GERMI) on the daily operations and maintenance of the plant," the company's managing director Pashupathy Gopalan told IANS.

According to Gopalan, the ground-mount photo-voltaic (PV) power plant is the first of its kind in Gujarat.

The plant, owned by Gujarat Power Corporation Ltd, the state's nodal agency for augmenting power generating capacity through private sector participation, is expected to produce more than 1.5 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of clean solar energy over the first year of its operation, he added.