Techno-financial analysis of Energy access through Hybrid system with Solar PV under various rural community models for State of Uttarakhand India
Uttarakhand state comes under special category state where approximately 69.45% population lived in rural area under the population density with a varied range of 37 to 607 persons per sq.km.Although Uttarakhand is having per capita consumption of 1112.29 kWh which is higher than national average per capita consumption of 779 kWh as till date, but remote communities, villages are not able to access clean, cheap and good quality of energy due to uneven terrain, lack of proper transmission & distribution lines and unclustered household living pattern.100% villages are electrified under the RGGVY scheme as per the Ministry of Power Govt. of India, but due to poor loading of the transformer, lack of grid infrastructure and natural calamities, remote house owners are not able to get a good quality of power thus affect the livelihood and source of income generation in various means. As Uttarakhand state having future plans to make state energy sufficient and energy access to all by the Year 2016-17, So few ground-level initiatives need to be taken, incorporate innovative business model with a non-conventional energy source and involve local people & panchayat to provide ownership and responsibility to operate these clean energy business model to improve livelihood in remote hilly places of Uttarakhand.
Under this analysis five different types of community models categories as Community I, Community II, Community III, Standalone I & Standalone II for rural &remote communities based on no of unclustered households with the distance covered between 200 m. to 20 km. , Electrical loads i.e lighting, fan, mobile chargers, television along with the time of day energy consumption patterns. These community models having their own consumption pattern during the day, afternoon and evening based on activity. These community model are for the remote hilly location where grid integration and distribution lines are not feasible to build due to hilly terrain, low soil strength and huge expenses for expanding power cables for supplying good quality power. These five community models having a composite source of energy Solar PV with a battery bank, Solar PV with battery Bank & Generator, and Solar PV along with DG, Solar PV which is a best renewable source of energy to cater energy access issue in remote hilly places, also Uttarakhand also comes under daily average radiation level of 5.14-5.50 kWh/m²/day. These three hybrid sources of power generation with Solar PV as a base source under five different community models, technical feasibility in terms of load sharing proposition with Solar PV and battery, DG, Energy production through PV, load consumption per year, Excess and unmet energy monitoring, battery sizing to meet the load during nights, DG operation when the solar energy not available due to weather condition and time of night.
Financial feasibility needs to be examined in terms of Levelized cost of energy, cost summary and O&M cost per year of three integrated sources of energy generation with solar PV under each community models.
These type of standalone business model is having success full stories in African countries where grid infrastructure is not available and the population are living in distributed segments. For India like developing countries where clean power to all is the main aim to cater to poverty, health issue and low living standard due to lack of mother of all development.
These five community models, financial and technical feasibility needs to examine with NREL Geospatial Tool integrated for INDIA, with HOMER software which is a micropower optimization tool. Analysis of these five community models technology integration with a renewable source of energy i.e. Solar PV along with Battery, DG and component costing, resource availability for country special. After comparing these different integrated sources of power generating option with Solar PV needs to be compared in terms of levelled cost of energy, simple payback period. Financially feasible community models for different hilly region based on their energy consumption needs to implement with the help of Local community by providing ownership to local people, panchayat, it not only cater energy access issue but provides clean, cheap, uninterruptible energy and improve livelihood standard to locals by engaging them into operation maintenance and tariff or rent collection.
