Design of an off-grid solar powered school for village community of India

Abstract

This paper presents the design of an off grid, stand- alone solar powered school located in a village of Chennai, India. The end use applications of the proposed photovoltaic (PV) system is to meet the year-round electricity demand of the school. The power is derived from 36, 230{W}-{{P}} solar panel units and 20 battery back-up system. Total generation capacity of the PV system is 45.34 kWh per day which can meet the 5-kW daily peak demand of the school load. A simulation is run on PVSyst software to verify the similarity of theoretical and software-based calculation. The system would replace the usage of diesel-based electricity generation system. The lifecycle cost (LCC) of the PV based design is compared with traditional diesel-based system. Results demonstrates that, the lifecycle cost reduces by 53%in a PV based system. To illustrate the greenhouse gas reduction potential of the design, total life cycle CO2 equivalent (CO2 eq) emission per kilowatt hour (kWh) is calculated which shows, in a PV based system green-house gas emission is reduced by a factor of 8.58 in compared to diesel-based system.