VISVESVARAYA TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

JNANA SANGAMA, BELAGAVI – 590018

BENGALURU – 560103.

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION

ENGINEERING

SELF STUDY ASSESSMENT

APPLICATION OF SOLAR ENERGY SYSTEMS

A Case Study Report on

“Rural Electrification Program using Solar Energy”

Submitted by

AFZAL HUSSAIN (1NH16EC004)

BHASKAR CHOUDHURY (1NH16EC015)
BIPIN DIXIT. H (1NH16EC016)
KUSHI PONNAMMA (1NH16EC043)

Submitted to

Ms. DHARMAMBAL

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Introduction

Government and private players working in a unison has created a favourable environment for
solar in India. The growth has been incredible till date, showing considerable increase in energy
generation rate. Solar favouring policies, strategies, and systems in place have done a great job
in leading India to become the third largest solar market and 4th largest economy in the world.

Government and private players working in a unison has created a favourable environment for
solar in India. The growth has been incredible till date, showing considerable increase in energy
generation rate. Solar favoring policies, strategies, and systems in place have done a great job in
leading India to become the third largest solar market and 4th largest economy in the world.

The electricity consumption per capita in India is just 566 KWh, which is far below most other
countries or regions in the world. Although 85%of villages are considered electrified, around
57% of the rural households and 12% of urban households, i.e. 84 million households in the
country, do not have access to electricity. Electricity consumption in India is expected to rise to
around 2280 kWh by 2021-22 and around 4500 kWh by 2031-32. Most parts of India have 300 -
330 sunny
days in a year, which is equivalent to over 5000 trillion kWh per year— more than India’s total
energy consumption per year. India is expected to have installed solar energy capacity of 20,000
MW by 2022.

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Solar Mini-Grids

Though Govt. of India has taken initiatives like- Power for all, Saubhagya plan, and Deendayal
Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) to electrify villages but more than 3000 villages are
still un-electrified. Issues concerning reaching the electricity lines to rural areas, and huge
distribution losses (~30%) have made it harder to illuminate the rural areas. In such a scenario, it
is important to highlight that a 50 kW solar grid with distribution capacity of 5 KM can power
~500 homes, businesses, schools, and couple of telecom towers with ease.
Solar Mini-grid installations within villages are gaining popularity, as they promise to offer
energy sustainability. Government has taken the hint and taking action on establishing solar
mini-grid plants.

Mini grid installations in Chhattisgarh by CREDA and in Sundarbans(WB) supervised by

WBREDA have already shown the capability to light up the un-electrified villages.
Establishing a Mini-grid circle has brought electricity to 130 households in villages like Kasina
and Bheldi (in Bihar). And following the footprint, Jharkhand Renewable Energy Development
Agency (JREDA) has introduced a project to electrify 320 households across 11 villages with
the help of Mini and Micro grids.
Government of India also has plans to establish 70 grids in Bihar and UP to offer energy.
Supporting the initiative, UP Government is planning to offer 30% subsidy on these installations.
Research shows that such developments have led to 16% off-grid development target.

Challenges

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Policy: Material procurement laws, delays in land acquisition, lack of awareness, and the gap
between creation and implementation of policies. Encouraging private entities to deploy isolated
Mini-grids in villages is also needed. Last but not the least, a focus on making subsidy disbursal
rules more flexible is needed to encourage private developers.
Economic: Lack of financing options have isolated Mini-grid developers and brought the
question whether their ventures will turn profit or not. Likewise, lack of subsidies on energy
storages has made solar growth challenging.
Technological: Delays or lack of net-metering deployment ratio, lack of or no standard
responses framework to system abuse, confusions in tariff collection are few of the
technological issues that halt Mini-grid progress.

Solar home systems

Stand-alone off-grid PV-systems that cover the electricity needs of single households, public
buildings or commercial units, offer a user-friendly and cost-effective electricity solution.
They can replace candles, kerosene and traditional unsustainable biomass, which are often used
for lighting purposes, as well as run other applications usually driven by dry-cell batteries or
diesel generators.
In countries like Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands of SHS are installed in last few years.

Types:

PicoPV Systems (ppS) :A PicoPV system is defined as a small SHS

with a power output of 1 to 10W, mainly used for lighting and thus
able to replace unhealthy and inefficient sources such as kerosene
lamps and candles.

Classical solar home systems (shs): Power output of up to 250W peak.

Components: modules, charge controller, battery and the loads. The overall energy management
is done by the charge controller as the central component of the system. Important advantages of
classical SHS are the DC loads like DC energy saving lamps, radios, DC TV and special DC

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fridges directly usable by the system. This makes SHS very energy efficient systems without
any conversion losses. There is also AC SHS.

Solar residential systems (srs): Larger stand-alone PV systems usually provide electricity to
large individual installations like hotels, hospitals, schools, factories etc. and offer a wide range
of applicable loads. At the same time this type of systems are still relatively easy to operate and
maintain.

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Remote Village Electrification in Sagar Island, West Bengal using
solar

Sagar Island (also known as Ganga Sagar) in Sundarbans, isolated from main land mass.
The area of the island is about 251.59 sq. km with 43 villages and a population of over
180408 with population density of 717 / sq. km.
Photovoltaic (P.V) put in place by the West Bengal Renewable
Energy Development Agency (WBREDA).
Criteria:
Economic : cost of product , maintenance and operating cost ,
Prevailing subsidy, tax benefits etc.
(ii) Social: Energy habit, social custom, aesthetic value of the product
customers goodwill such as lowering of pollution by use of these
"green system" , political goodwill/ propaganda, population density
& accessibility of the location, grid connectivity, etc.
(iii) Environmental : Availability of solar radiation & other conditions
related to the performance of the SPV system.
(iv) Supply of time: A: 24 hours supply, B: fixed time supply, C: Any time supply

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ANALYSIS

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Morocco Solar Power study

Project Summary

This case study will describe Morocco’s use of a public-private partnership of ONE with a
private company to achieve its rural electrification objectives.
Morocco’s Office National de l’Electricité (ONE) is the state-run operator in Morocco’s
electricity supply sector and the government entity that oversees the rural electrification
project.
The technology selected presents various social, economic and environmental benefits while
encouraging the rural population to remain on their land, rather than move to the small towns
or large cities that are connected to the grid.
The private operator is responsible for the installation and maintenance of solar equipment as
well as the collection of users’ fees in 24 of Morocco’s 62 prefectures and provinces.
However, the solar customers actually become clients of the ONE once they sign the utility
contract.
In order to ensure the viability and sustainability of the project, the government and the
operator agreed to a fee-for-service business model. The customers pay an initial connection
fee and a monthly service fee determined by the type of service that they receive. ONE
enables the partnership to offer electrical service at affordable rates, by offsetting the high
installation.

Project Objectives

Based on the 2004 census, the population of Morocco is 29.7 million, of whom 45 percent
live in rural areas. In 2004, 16.4 percent of the rural inhabitants were living on less than $2
per day, and many of these rural residents lacked access to modern services that can be found
in the urban areas.
This is because the Moroccan power system is centralized to support the needs of urban
centers, while the government recognizes that access to reliable energy can enhance both
human and economic development, incorporating rural households into the grid is too costly
a venture.
Demand is unevenly distributed throughout the country and the distance between homes and
from homes to the grid makes it difficult to incorporate them into the centralized system.
Since solar power became a more viable option, The primary objective was to provide
photovoltaic kits to over 58,000 households in rural Morocco to enable them to meet their
basic energy needs. In turn, rural electrification would provide local development benefits in

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terms of health, education, economic development and also reduce macroeconomic strains on
the economy through processes such as rural-urban migration.
Additionally, the project is expected to create jobs in sales, installation and after-sales
services in the rural areas where employment is scarce.

Project Description

Partners:
The private operator is a Renewable Energy Service Company (RESCO) comprised of
French oil and electricity companies and one of their joint subsidiaries which aids in design,
production, installation and operations, including technical and managerial.
The Office National de l’Electricité manages the overall coherency of the rural electrification
project. And defines the specifications of the project before implementation and ensures that
solar power operators maintain commitments to the project and measures the satisfaction of
the operator’s customers.
The agency also provides subsidy funding, which enables the operator to provide the service
at rate that is more affordable through grants and loans from bilateral aid agencies. It is
through this mixture of the free market and government and foreign intervention to bridge the
energy gap with the wealthier countries of the North.
Implementation Environment - Legislative and Administrative:
In 1995, the Rural Electrification Pilot Program (PPER) was launched in Morocco under a
Franco-Moroccan memorandum of understanding and a four-party agreement made by the
Moroccan General Directorate of Local Communities (DGCL), the Moroccan Energy
Ministry, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) and the French Agency for the
Environment and Energy Management (ADEME) which led to the installation of 2,000
photovoltaic systems, funded by the users and several group systems such as small hydraulic
or diesel power plants. Utility companies were set upto maintain and oversee the facilities.
Customers were guaranteed electrical service in return for their payments.

ONE launched a program known as the Global Rural Electrification Program (PERG) to
supply electricity throughout the country by 2007 to approximately 12 million people,
representing 80% of the rural population in an effort to minimize the capital costs for
customers. It decided to provide electricity to 91% of the villages by connecting them to the
national power system by means of a decentralized system driven bywind and hydroelectric
power.
The large scale solar project required investments beyond the capabilities of the ONE, hence
the Moroccan government supplied financial support to make the program viable which
culminated in the establishment of a legal framework to define the local operator’s mission:
whenever it costs more than 27,000 Dirhams ($3,250 USD) to connect a household up to a
grid, the house would be electrified using a photovoltaic kit.

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\

Financial Agreement:
The equipment grant was largely financed through a $6.5 million grant from the German
Bank KfW, a $6.5 million soft loan from the French Development Agency (AFD) and a $1.5
million grant from the French Fund for the World Environment (FFEM).
The private operator contributes twenty-four percent of the project’s cost. $1.5 million came
from self-financing, while $2.5 million was borrowed in the form of loans. The
company’sshareholders provided $4.5 million in additional financing.

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