Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
Guwahati - 781039, India

Solar PV power plant (20 kW) installation for Smart Off-grid Power Utilization

One of the basic limitations of a solar PV power plant is to utilize a battery system that stores and delivers electrical power to the customer upon demand. The utilization of a battery system is prone to enhance pollution and other environmental hazards. Therefore, solar PV power plants installed without integrated battery system refer to the off-grid system of intellectually utilizing generated power directly by the customer. While such an option exist, the issue remains whether solar power can be utilized to the fullest capacity with such an approach. The reason for the same is that the solar power in such circumstances is utilized only when solar power is produced as solar power generated is not stored. To circumvent this problem, the think tank of Green Office have proposed to verify the technical and economic feasibility of integrating solar PV system with the existing UPS battery bank with a charge capacitor. Such integration would ensure the smartest utilization of solar power with an off-grid operating scenario. The project proposal assumes further interesting and challenging scenario of handling low solar incidence at Guwahati. Considering these issues, the project proposal has been prepared to evaluate and identify the most competent options amongst these two scenarios:

  • Off-grid solar PV power generation without integration with existing UPS battery bank.
  • Off-grid solar PV power generation with integration with existing UPS battery bank.

The solar PV power plant of 20 kW capacity would be tested on the library building of IIT Guwahati with formal integration with a 20 kW UPS system. Techno-economics and daily performance of the plant will be of immense interest to evaluate the potential of solar PV based power generation for micromanagement of electrical power. Upon successful inputs and SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat) analysis, the project could be extended towards all Departments and Centres at IIT Guwahati. <-- back to projects