A feasibility analysis of decentralized solar power using RETScreen in Odisha

Abstract

Since from the dawn of mankind, necessity gives birth to technology. PV is the most promising source of renewable energy in India. The need of PV technologies in the present day is unavoidably necessary, as these help the consumers to maintain sustainability, by providing innovative PV technology options and more subsidies by the government. This will help the future generations enjoy their right to clean environment and can consume energy as per their needs. Although the Renewable energy sources are accompanied with certain constraints as unreliability, unavailability and discontinuous generation; great deals of research works are being carried out on solar energy to produce electricity, which can suffice the disadvantages mentioned above. Solar PV technologies hold quite remarkable commitment for Bhubaneswar, India which has a high insolation of 4.5–5 kWh/m2/day as per the data collected from Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India, for about 300 sunny days per year in India. Solar PV technologies are commercially feasible and produce technologically mature products which have existed in the country for many years. But still, the market share of solar energy fails to fulfil the expectations of the people [1]. Hence, keeping in mind the way a consumer thinks while buying a product, it can be said that if the solar products were a little less expensive along with the uninterrupted maintenance services offered by the companies, the willingness of people to go for the solar products would have been more [2]. Nevertheless, in rural areas, light is usually unavailable and if it does, the prime focus is given to incandescent light used for household lighting instead of fluorescent. System reliability, economy and environmental issues are major three issues for decentralised electrification. So, the need of the hour is to overcome these constraints by the implementation of RETScreen software. This software provides [2] the user with a broad range of options for assessing the technical, financial and environmental suitability for an investment in a 'clean energy' project. It integrates a number of databases to assist the site assessor, including a global database of climatic conditions obtained from 4,700 groundbased stations and NASA's satellite data [3].