Grid Free Living

Project Title

Grid Free Living

Project Area of Specialization Electrical/Electronic EngineeringProject Summary

A large proportion of the world’s population lives in remote rural areas that are geographically isolated and sparsely populated. Such areas have very low power demand and hence, are not connected to the grid. However, electricity is one of the cleanest energy transfer options and is therefore the basis for the development of an area irrespective of the source of power. And since in a developing country like Pakistan where the majority of the population lives in remote rural areas with no utility grid, this seems to be the main obstacle to overall development. Pakistan is one of the most geographically and strategically important countries in South Asia. Yet, it has been suffering from a severe energy crisis since the last four decades or so. Although Pakistan’s energy sector has greatly expanded the electricity network over the recent years, still over 50 million Pakistanis are not connected to the grid. This makes it highly difficult to carry out the daily routine tasks which inevitably renders the quality of life in these areas to be below the standard average.  

In recent years, from an environmental point of view, the renewable energy resources are being looked at as unlimited, inexhaustible, environmentally friendly and sustainable sources. Direct and indirect benefits of the electricity generation by renewable sources in rural areas include irrigation, food preservation, crop processing, cooling and small-scale industries which help in improving the living standard of the people. This opens up the entire domain of renewable energy power systems to cater to the energy crisis in Pakistan without compromising on the quality of life.

Grid-Free Living essentially aims to target this population, enhancing their living standards and overall socio-economic conditions by ensuring an uninterrupted supply of clean and green electricity around the clock as per their energy requirements. The first step to achieve that is closely analyzing the load demand calculations in order to determine the energy needs of the community under question. This is followed by determining the size of photovoltaic solar panels and battery banks to support the system and power the load. Finally, the system sizing is concluded by determining the size of the entire generation system to fulfill the required energy needs and simultaneously charge up the battery storage. Modularity and scalability are also important aspects of this approach, which will allow us to expand the project to a larger scale in the future. As a result of our proposed solar hybrid solution, people residing in off-grid communities will be able to improve their standard of living, ridding them of any intermittent power outages if they happen to be connected to the grid. This will automatically create employment opportunities in the region while opening up valuable business opportunity for PV industry in Pakistan.

Project Objectives

In layman terms, off-grid living refers to living unconnected to the public electric utility system and under such circumstances, the users rely on a standalone system of energy production and storage. Consequently, our primary goal is to take advantage of a hybrid photovoltaic assembly to accomplish the task of providing reliable off-grid living to the communities in Pakistan, regardless of the weather conditions, shade or the absence of sunlight during the dark hours. Hence, our project aims to raise the living standards of the grid disconnected communities while efficiently addressing the prevalent energy crisis in Pakistan. The primary objectives of our project can be divided into 4 categories which are as follows:

Production

· To come up with a hybrid PV setup, that ensures the provision of continuous supply of energy to the consumer without compromising on the quality of life.

· To ensure that the source is clean and green and minimizes the carbon footprint when compared to the utility grid.

·  To ensure that the setup is robust and covers up the load demand of the consumer it is installed for.

Storage

·  To ensure that the hybrid system covers up for electricity provision even in case of a fault.

·  To come up with a backup source in conjunction with the primary source which ensures undisrupted supply of electricity to the consumer.

·  To certify that the batteries used are more efficient than the conventional lead acid batteries.

Scalability

· To ensure that the proposed solution is scalable and can cater to a community or larger consumer segment if the need arises.

·  The end product could be housed and sold as module to be easily operated by the consumer.

Modularity

·  To come up with a source that is modular in nature. As a general trend, over a period of a year, the load demand of a house increases gradually, therefore we need to affirm that the solution proposed is capable to cater to the growing needs of the consumer.

Project Implementation Method

The proposed project entails designing and implementing a reliable off-grid system for a single household and eventually expanding the scale of the system to incorporate a wider community. With this in mind, the project can be divided into 3 broad areas, namely: production, storage and load management.

The implementation approach to be adopted consists of evaluating the average load demand of a certain household to size the production and storage system accordingly. We plan to utilize solar panels for the purpose of electricity generation, deploying sophisticated algorithms to extract the maximum power from the solar irradiations for as long as they are available. The generated voltage is then boosted to a suitable level for storage in efficient lithium-ion batteries for an undisrupted flow of power. It should be noted that the power that is produced by the solar panels and stored in the batteries is DC in nature, which needs to be converted to AC before it can be fed into the sockets in household applications. For this purpose, an inverter system will be deployed following the batteries to convert the DC power from the batteries (or directly from the solar panels) to AC power of 220V RMS.

The system will be optimized such that users can maintain their living standards without relying on the national grid while saving on energy wastages. Moreover, propositions for system scalability will also be made in accordance with the demand of an entire community so that a greater proportion of the Pakistan’s population can benefit from the prospects of grid-free living.

Benefits of the Project

Unlike a project that is initiated because of its technical brilliance in academics, this project is conceived by the industry purely on commercial and financial considerations with an added element of solving a problem that touches the lives of masses in developing countries. The outcome is architected in a series of meetings to introduce a solution that addresses an already existing and established need with enhanced financial benefit and utility to the customer base. It promises to create an energy micro-economy not just for sales and service of this project, , but a series of other energy initiatives that were historically hampered because of a good electrical provision solution. Our proposition is not the whole solution but it plugs one of the most glaring holes in our capability of providing such solution.

The idea of Green energy has gained rampant support across the globe and Pakistan too is in the race to rely on 30% of the renewable energy source by the year 2030. This requires the country to make up multiple projects in the renewable energy field. By the implementation of Hybrid Solar PV as a means to provide electricity provision to the off-grid residencies, this goal does not seem a far-fetched one. Moreover, for every kilowatt of the Solar provision installed at homes, the carbon footprint falls down by over 3,000 pounds annually so our proposed Grid-free setup will have a minimum carbon footprint as compared to other electrification methods.

Many communities across the country lack the basic necessities owing to lack of connection to the utility. The cost of connecting these communities to the grid is generally high mainly due to a difficult geographical terrain which makes it almost impossible to supply the grid connections to these houses. However, in remote rural communities, the cost of solar power can fall below the cost of grid extension when capital cost, along with transmission and distribution losses, is considered in full. Moreover, Pakistan majorly relies on imported non-renewable fuels to meet its energy needs, which takes up a considerable proportion of Pakistan’s annual expenditure. However, grid-free living as an alternative to the national grid can help overcome these heavy import costs and stabilize the economy.

Mental health is affected greatly when people face the intermittent supply of electricity and leads to stress and depression, when a certain task is delayed due to the frequent power outages faced. In order to improve the physiological and social behaviors of the people, the notion of grid-free and continuous power source which does not compromise the quality of life, is prime. Likewise, unemployment is a grave issue for Pakistan, but when seen relatively, this issue is rampant in areas that are not tied to the grid making the numbers of unemployed workforce drop below 50%. By the provision of clean and subsidized energy resource these numbers can be improved to a massive extent.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

The final deliverable of the project will be a 10KW energy system where power is produced via a series and parallel combination of solar panels. The sizing of the panel is based on the max power consumption obtained from the annual load data of a household which in our case is 10kW (keeping in view the constraints of the system).  

Owing to the time varying irradiance and temperature conditions, the power output of the PV array is hardly near the rated power of the panels, resulting in a low conversion ratio for the array. Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) then becomes essential to extract the maximum output power from the array and improve the system efficiency. A perturb and observe approach will be implemented for achieving MPPT.

Lithium-ion batteries rated at 140V will be used to store the energy produced by the solar panels. However, the MPPT power output needs to be boosted to the rated voltage before it can be fed to the batteries and for this purpose, a 10kW boost converter is required. This is achieved through a parallel combination of 5 boost converters each rated at 2kW.

A boost converter is also required after the batteries to boost the output to 380V DC before it can be fed to 3-phase DC to AC inverter producing AC power at 220V RMS. To achieve a 3-phase inverter configuration, 3 single phase, sine wave inverters rated at approximately 3.3KW will be designed and connected in parallel.

Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemCore Industry Energy Other IndustriesCore Technology OthersOther TechnologiesSustainable Development Goals Good Health and Well-Being for People, Affordable and Clean Energy, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Sustainable Cities and Communities, Responsible Consumption and ProductionRequired Resources

Item Name	Type	No. of Units	Per Unit Cost (in Rs)	Total (in Rs)
			Total in (Rs)	74400
Ir2110 GateDrivers	Equipment	100	160	16000
IGBT H40T120	Equipment	50	150	7500
Power diodes	Equipment	20	270	5400
Dspic304011	Equipment	20	1000	20000
PCB Sheet	Equipment	13	500	6500
current sensors	Equipment	20	230	4600
AWG 16	Equipment	1	500	500
Powdered iron toroid cores	Equipment	13	500	6500
heatsinks	Equipment	20	65	1300
microcontroller burner	Equipment	2	550	1100
travelling cost	Miscellaneous	1	3000	3000
Printing	Miscellaneous	1	2000	2000