DEVELOPMENT OF INTEGRATED RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEM FOR AN UN-ELECTRIFIED REMOTE AREA

Abstract

Energy is one of the critical inputs for long-term development of a country. The demand has increased dramatically with the population growth. At present, a large share of energy is harnessed from fossil fuels. However, due to escalating prices, continuous depletion, and adverse environmental impact associated with fossil fuels, meeting the growing demand for energy in a safe and environmentally friendly manner is a key challenge. Therefore, as a step towards sustainable development and with advancement in technology, renewable energy sources (RESs) have the potential to offset the fossil fuels for generation of electricity. India is among world’s largest populated countries with a rapidly growing economy. However, India has a shortfall in the total generation capacity to meet the demand during the peak load period as the demand has grown faster than the generation capacity. Presently, there are still several rural and remote areas in the country where electricity has not been reached yet. Providing electricity to remote and rural areas by extending the grid may not always be efficient, economical and technically feasible due to large distance from the existing grid, low load density and inaccessibility of these areas. Since India is blessed with huge potential for renewable energy resources like solar, wind, small hydro, biomass, etc., the use of locally available renewable energy resources for meeting the energy demand of rural and remote areas could be a better option. Also, as the power output from most of the RESs is intermittent, single RES based technology cannot meet the energy demand adequately for an extended period. This advocates a need of suitable energy storage system to increase the reliability of such facility. However, this would lead to increased complexity and cost of the overall system. On the other hand, if a combination of two or more RES technologies is employed, a similar reliability level be achieved at a lower cost. An energy system utilizing more than one RES to supply a variety of energy needs of the community is called an integrated renewable energy system (IRES). The proposed work aims to develop an IRES for a rural and remote area to fulfil various energy needs of the population living in a remote location.