Study of Institutional Solar Photovoltaic System and Its Optimization in Design

Abstract

Energy is one of the important necessities of the society and basic for sustainable development. It is derived from the different fuel resources which are grouped into different categories based on the fuel characteristics, monetization, resources availability, dependency etc. Total annual energy consumption of our country Nepal is 401 Million GJ (WECS 2010). Till date, around 12% population has access to electricity through renewable energy sources. Around 23 MW of electricity has been generated from micro hydro schemes, 12 MW from solar PV system, less than 20 KW from wind energy etc. In this context most of the rural area is not connected with the national Grid line and the rural area people are using the solar home system (SHS) for the lighting purpose where people can have lights for nearly 4 hours. However in Urban area people have alternative power backup. People in the urban area were used Inverter based power backup intensively and in the office Diesel Generator was used in most of the places during load-shedding period. Government of Nepal with the support from the Donor Agencies is providing subsidies to the SHS for rural household as well as the ISPS for the institutional purpose. Various companies install ISPS in the rural area annually but the most of the system is nonfunctional after a couple of years of installation.  This study is focused to perform a comprehensive study on determining the size of the various components used in institutional solar photo-voltaic system (ISPS), point out the system design error in the previously installed system and proposed a sustainable approach of designing ISPS.

Journal of Advanced College of Engineering and Management, Vol. 3, 2017, Page: 93-102