Solar resource model for rural microgrids in India

Abstract

There is a strong correlation between access to electricity and quality of life. Approximately 1.4 billion people in the world currently lack access to electricity. Furthermore, 85% of the people without access to electricity live in rural areas. The cost of installing electrical infrastructure to these remote communities is often unrealistic. Microgrids offer another approach for electrification of some of the worlds most remote rural areas. Standalone microgrids can be used in an economically favorable, environmentally benign, and sustainable fashion to meet the needs of these rural communities. This paper provides an overview of the work being performed by the SPEED consortium to develop rural microgrids in India and the modeling effort the team put together to capture the renewable energy resources available in those areas. While SPEED works to develop a variety of renewable based microgrids, only the solar based model is covered in this paper. The model was developed in MATLAB using field data from India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and team partners.