Abstract
A recent survey shows that a large percentage of people living in underdeveloped countries do not have access to electricity and are isolated from the rest of the world. Solar energy can help meet the energy demand; however, it has an intermittent nature and relatively high installation cost. The improvement in off-grid Solar Home Systems (SHS) helped many people get access to electricity. However, systems are sized to meet demand on cloudy days, which results in significant wastage of available energy on sunny days, reducing the energy return on investment. This research paper discusses the load requirement of the people living in rural locations. It uses data collected over the last year by collaborating organisations, providing detailed load and solar charging data for off-grid households in Odisha, India. This dataset is analysed to understand the working principle of the installed SHS and the typical daily load profile. Next, the solar data is compared with solar data from online accessible software on an hourly basis and on a 5-minute scale to evaluate the surplus energy. The data shows a significant surplus of solar energy for most of the year that could be used for other low-powered devices. Various methods are discussed to detect surplus energy available during the daytime based on the provided solar data.
Highlights
As per World Bank Data, access to electricity is variable across the world
The Solcast data was used to determine the solar power input based on the known rated peak-Watts of the solar module
Other studies have looked at energy usage of Solar Home Systems (SHS), no previous studies have presented results based on detailed electrical data collection
Summary
As per World Bank Data, access to electricity is variable across the world. access to electricity in developed countries is 97.4%, whereas in underdeveloped countries is only 78.7%, i.e., lack of access to electricity is eight times higher in less developed countries [1]. Solar energy is generated during the daytime, whereas the primary energy demand by rural households is usually during the night [6] Besides these challenges, people living in underdeveloped countries face poor connectivity to the grid or increased charges for electricity. Researchers from Pakistan propose connecting SHS together with energy storage to enable surplus power to be delivered to community loads [19] This is an interesting approach, it requires significant additional infrastructure to connect households and energy storage together with the central controller. The primary source of data was from a company that has been monitoring solar home systems installed in the Indian state of Odisha, one of the regions with the lowest access to grid electricity This data is studied and analysed to understand solar patterns and load profiles. The energy return on investment of the SHS can be improved
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