Economic growth and development is desirable for developing countries like India and energy is essential input for economical growth. However, the relationship between economical growth and the energy demand is not always consistent. Eg- Under present conditions, 6% increase in India’s GDP would impose an increased demand of 9% on its energy sector. India’s overall generation capacity as of November 2016 stands at 308.83 GW, of which approximately 262.165 GW comes from conventional energy sources and 46,665 MW from renewable energy sources. According to India’s existing power demand the power infrastructure is not capable to meet the need of load. Still Indian villages are in dark.
The Indian energy scenario shows either resources or technology used for energy sector is imported from other countries. India is dependent on other countries for energy sector. Compared with developed the power infrastructure and energy practices are developing now a days. The resources India is using have adverse impacts on climate and biodiversity. The consistent use of those resources will make adverse impact on human life. There is a need to go for resource capable of meeting India’s today’s energy demand without compromising the ability of future. The resources should be clean, sustainable and efficient. The solar energy can be option as sun’s energy is free and vast. Solar cells made of silicon can convert the solar radiation into electrical energy i.e photovoltaic, another is solar thermal. The solar photovoltaic has very good outputs and can be implemented anywhere. The solar PV panels can be used in as off grid and grid interactive systems.
Grid Interactive Solar Power Plants
Solar photovoltaic power plant is connected to grid with the gross metering system or net metering systems in India. The grid interactive system has great potential and very popular in India. Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is promoting the solar grid interactive system at large scale. The grid tie system has great potential to make the power infrastructure more strong and sustainable. The grid tie solar system has the ability to meet the need of present without compromising the ability of future. The grid tie systems may lead India to better energy security. The system can be installed by industrial, domestic purpose, commercial purpose,etc.
Table 3: Grid Connected Solar PV plants in India
The total installed solar roof top power plants in India is 500 MW out of 8874.87MW. India’s target is to install 22 GW solar roof top power plants by 2022. This target can be revised as the energy need is growing with time.
The main blocks include in solar power plants
- SOLAR (DC): Module mounting structure, DC cable, Solar modules
• Power Conditioning Unit: Solar Inverter
• Power Evacuation: AJB (Array Junction Box), ACDB (AC Distribution Box), AC CABLES
• Measuring Instruments and Data Logging System: Whether monitoring system, Energy Meter, SCADA
Practices to improve performance of grid tie solar power plants in India
The performance of solar power plants is dependent on the weather conditions such as irradiance, wind speed, temperature; various performance loss factors. The output of solar power plant can be maximized by certain standard practices while designing and the installation. The sun irradiations availability in India is very good. The modules should be mounted in order to optimize the output. The modules should be mounted with facing to the south as India is in the northern hemisphere of earth. There are four seasons in India the sun path varies in every season according to the sun path tilt of modules should be given.
Figure 1: Overview of GRID CONNECTED SOLAR power plant
Table 3: Optimised Tilt for Solar Module in India
Sun’s irradiations are very important as output mainly depends on it. Irradiations are of two different types like diffused irradiation and directed irradiations. As the irradiation changes, the output current changes and the power of the solar plant changes. As the irradiation increases, the output power also increases and the performance of the solar power plant increases. There should be minimum shadow on the modules to maximize the output. The solar modules give good performance for first 25 years with some degradation every year the performance of modules decreases. The modules should be selected with NOCT45 (Nominal Operating Cell Temperature) as ambient temperature in India is high compared to European countries. Power conditioning is very important in the grid tie system, the inverter converts the DC into AC. Inverters used are probably transformer less and based on a power electronics. The inverter with maximum number of MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) should be preferred. The modules with different orientations should be connected to the separate MPPT in order to maximize the outputs.
Figure 2: Sun path diagram.
Conclusion
According to MNRE’S resources India is having 8874.87 MW Solar PV grid connected capacity which can produce 13279941MW per year. The solar has potential to produce clean energy to meet the need of present without compromising the ability of future. The solar grid interactive power plants have great potentials to make India energy secure and make India energy independent.
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