DEVELOPMENT OF SOLAR PHOTO VOLTAIC SYSTEM FOR THE PREMISES OF NEPAL OIL CORPORATION Ltd. KATHMANDU IN NEPAL

Abstract

According to the annual report data record 2073/74 of Nepal oil Corporation Ltd., high budget expenditure is used for purchase the petroleum products from the third country to fulfill the daily energy needs and is increasing its demand by 20% per annum. Also, the trend of daily increasing price of petroleum products proportion to the money inflation/deflation rate plays vital role that directly affects the country economy. Together with the high potential of Hydroelectricity, Nepal has huge potential in solar energy. In the present scenario, Solar Photovoltaic (SPV) technology has been applied in standalone plants in Nepal, mostly in rural areas. Despite this, nation should launch such a clear directive in institutional policy for SPV technology comprising with the diversified techno economic and financial indicator that play vital role for energy management scheme in present and future as well. Now days its popularity has been utilized in industrial state and may cross the milestone for the present energy crunch in near future. In this dissertation work, one of fuel storage depot of Nepal Oil Corporation Ltd. Kathmandu in Nepal was selected as study area. The proposed site is suitable for Development of Solar Photovoltaic Plant, allowing the optimum sun exposure of 300 days in year sunshine with average insolation intensity about 4.7 kWh/m 2/day. The main objective of the dissertation work is to size a solar power generation plant utilizing the optimum available area in the fuel depot premises. Under the present study, the rooftop area of the various buildings, fuel storage vertical tank including barren land, situated at the Nepal oil corporation premises is calculated as 33146.53m 2 to install the solar photovoltaic system for electricity generation. To size the solar photovoltaic plant typical meteorological year (TMY) data for hourly solar irradiance is collected from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) website. Simulations were performed using solar industry’s leading design tool, PVSYST for the system produced energy prediction which yields 3777MWh/year. Per unit generation cost is also calculated which come to be as NPR 5.28 for the grid-connected system. Though, per unit generation cost comparatively is high in designing the standalone system so that grid connected is preferred. After sizing the solar power plant, the total power plant capacity is recommended as 2 MW. Finally, power generated from the proposed solar plant is proposed to be evacuated through 11 KV pooling substation connected through a 11 kV transmission line to NEA owned Mathatritha Grid Substation at a distance of around 4 km from the proposed site. It is found that SPV could be a good alternative solution to fulfill current as well as future energy of the study area. However, there is a need to conduct further extensive studies on techno-economic viability