Forty five acres of solar panels glistening in the sun is not what you expect to see when you walk into a typical airport. Prepare to challenge your imagination in the port city Kochi that has set up a first of its kind fully solar powered aerodrome.

With a 12 MWp solar power plant that consists of 46,150 solar panels located close to its cargo compound powering all its energy needs, Kochi Airport recently wrote its name in bold in the annals of history. It is believed that after this project, Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL), as it's popularly called, will be able to save 300,000 tons equivalent carbon emissions in the next 25 years by producing 48,000 units of energy a day. This is akin to planting around three million trees or not driving 750 million miles.

Redefining the rules of the game is not new to Kochi. In fact, the Kochi airport was also the first to have been built under the Public Private partnership or the PPP model. After this successful operation, CIAL is now looking for more alternate energy resources in Kerala, which doesn't seems to be a problem as the place has abundant greenery and natural water bodies.

Kochi airport, situated at Nedumbassery in the state of Kerala, is about 30 km away from the city centre. After Delhi and Mumbai, it is the busiest in the country in terms of international passenger traffic since it caters to the entire state of Kerala. The airport has three well-maintained terminals, namely domestic, international and cargo, which serve prominent national and international carriers like Air India, Air India Express, IndiGo, Jet Airways, SpiceJet, Srilankan Airlines, Gulf Air and Air Arabia, among others.