Practical design of an Off-grid Solar PV system for Domestic application

Abstract

The rapid increase in energy demand must be matched with the rapid increase in energy supply, but unfortunately, this match is difficult so the traditional grid is suffering from blackouts. Hence, there is a need for an innovative approach to energy issues. This research work focuses on the practical design of the stand-alone Solar Photovoltaic system for domestic application considering the clearness of the sky, solar insolation variations, etc. The calculations that are involved in this work were done based on the daily load profile, geographical location of the selected place. The cable size in various stages of the proposed PV system is calculated. The break-even period of the proposed PV system is estimated as 12 years (approximately). The proposed system will reduce 75.48% of electricity bills and mitigate 7.48 tons of CO <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> emissions per annum. The percent power loss of the proposed PV system due to the soiling effect was also calculated. The major novelties of this research lie on load profile estimation based on the availability of the sun in a day, and CO <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> emissions mitigation, and soiling effect on the PV system power loss.