Design and development of Solar DC Microgrid for rural consumers
Electrical Energy is the backbone of country's economic development. Electricity is an important commodity of modern era. Electricity is used in every sector of life. The developing countries, however, are facing severe challenges of managing energy crises a
2025-06-28 16:31:26 - Adil Khan
Design and development of Solar DC Microgrid for rural consumers
Project Area of Specialization Electrical/Electronic EngineeringProject Summary Electrical Energy is the backbone of country's economic development. Electricity is an important commodity of modern era. Electricity is used in every sector of life. The developing countries, however, are facing severe challenges of managing energy crises and ensuring availability of electricity. Pakistan is an energy deficit country and is facing electrical crisis heavily due to rise in population, thus increase in the number of consumers, the economic growth, urbanization and with improved living standards. It is estimated that electricity demand is growing at 7% per annum for the areas with existing grid connection. At the same time, a large rural population of about 35-40% is, however, without electricity access due to absence of grid connectivity.
Planning for electricity infrastructure development is a daunting task requiring short to long term planning for both grid connected and off grid areas of the country. At present, electricity generation in Pakistan is mainly based on imported fuel which is a severe burden on the national exchequer. Due to high fuel costs, the world is paying heed towards the Renewable Energy Resources to meet the load demand. Renewable Energy Resources are replenished and are never exhausted, so they seem to be the best remedy to this issue. Renewable energy resources such as Solar and Wind can bolster Pakistan to produce less or nil operating cost electricity and are having no carbon dioxide emissions.
A microgrid is a small scale power grid that operates independently or collaboratively with other small power grids. DC micro grid with centralized solar generation and decentralized storage is the simplest, reliable, cost effective, scalable and highly efficient solution to provide access to electricity to people living without access to electricity. DC micro grid uses array of solar panel connected in series to produce electrical power at 12V DC, which can be transmitted over distance of 1-2km at 12V distribution line using a cable and supporting poles. This project aims to supplly control and monitor DC power to 5 householdsThis project .helps us in doing technoeconomic analysis of solar microgrid and will show us the technical and economic advantages of the solar dc microgrid over the National grid that uses the carbon dioxide emitting chemicals like coal whereas solar is pollution free source of electricity and requires no running cost. This project is based on the Solar DC Microgrid for meeting the load demand, Solar DC microgrid can be used to provide solar energy that can be supplied to the rural consumers that have no access to the national grid because of various reasons and will cater their demand with clean energy.
The objectives of this project are given below:
- To generate maintenance free electricity to overcome electricity crisis.
- To Develope the model of Solar DC microgrid that can be used to supply the rural consumers.
- To Analyze the operation of Solar DC microgrid and ways to increase its efficiency.
- To supply, monitor and control Dc power to five houses.
- To analyze the techno economical benefits of Solar DC Microgrid.
In order to install Solar Dc microgrid for the rural consumers, first, we check in how many households we are going to provide access to the electricity and then we setup the DC microgrid consisting of the PV Panels, batteries, controller and other auxiliaries.Controller is used to give us a constant output because sunlight intensity is not constant whole day so we may not get the same output whole day , so controller does this job. Batteries are used to store the electric power for later use during the nighttime and act as a backup source for electricity . PV panels consist of combinations of solar cells aggregated in series and parallel arrangement. The rating of the Solar panels and batteries is decided by considering the load i.e. how much power we require. We combine PV panels and batteries; Solar panels work on the principle that when light tickles them they produce electricity. Since we don’t have electricity during the nighttime so we should conceive a mechanism that we should have access to light during the nighttime too. Batteries appear to be the best solution to this issue. We install batteries with the solar panels which would provide as backup when there is no light or deficit light due to the climatic conditions such as fog and rain.The proposed project aims to provide ,monitor and control electric power to five houses.
Different software and hardware utilization techniques were used to develop a system. By gathering the information of the currently available system suitable with demand. In this system we are considering the five households load of rural area. To develop this system certain steps undertaken:
Step 1: Estimate load of each house: We must jot down the number of houses that are to be given access to the electricity through the Solar Dc microgrid so that we can estimate the load of each house.
Step 2: Distance between the houses and the grid: We must check the distance between the houses that are to be connected through the microgrid and the microgrid in order to estimate the expenses of the project.
Step 3: Estimate the cost of the project: We must estimate the cost of project so that we can calculate that the project is feasible and countercheck that the project is producing the benefit instead of getting us into losses.
Step 4: System Component Connections: Connect the system components as shown in figure to develop desire output.
The main benifits of the proposed project are given below:
- We can cater the electricity demand of the rural areas.
- This project will benifit us in a way that we technoeconomically analyze the Solar Microgrid and find its benifit over the conventional electricity.
- We get benifit from this proposed prioject as we get the clean energy and avoid carbon dioxide emission that is deterioting the environment day by day.
- We compare the Solar Dc microgrid with the conventional electricity of grid and check its advantage over conventional produced electricity in terms of cost, operation , and life
The project 'Design and development of Solar DC microgrid " is made to overcome electricity crisis and provide access to the rural consumers who are having no electricity. The Project consists of hardware model as well as Simulation and the Thesis about the Project . Hardware model consists of Solar Pv Panels , charge controller , switches , a battery for backup power during the night time and the load like fans , and LED lights . the project is expected to be completed and delivered by the end of August 2020 and the Simualtion is made on Softwares like Matlab and HOMER . The whole project hardware and software will be delivered by the end of August 2020.
Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemCore Industry Energy Other Industries Energy , Manufacturing Core Technology Clean TechOther Technologies OthersSustainable Development Goals Affordable and Clean Energy, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Climate ActionRequired Resources| Item Name | Type | No. of Units | Per Unit Cost (in Rs) | Total (in Rs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total in (Rs) | 40250 | |||
| PV Plate 150 W | Equipment | 2 | 8000 | 16000 |
| Tabular Battery 150 AH | Equipment | 1 | 16000 | 16000 |
| Charge Controller | Equipment | 1 | 2000 | 2000 |
| LED lights | Equipment | 5 | 150 | 750 |
| Fan | Miscellaneous | 5 | 1000 | 5000 |
| Siwtches and Wires DC | Miscellaneous | 1 | 500 | 500 |