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India has a huge industrial demand for process heating at temperatures that can be provided with commercially available solar collectors. Government of India with support from multi-lateral agencies has initiated an ambitious programme for promoting large scale adoption of Solar Industrial Process Heating (SIPH) in the industrial sector of the country. This paper presents the details of an attempt to study the effect of several existing and potential incentives on the financial attractiveness of SIPH systems in India. A case of solar process heating in dairy industry has been presented to demonstrate the relative efficacy of different incentives on the economics of SIPH systems in terms of their impact on levelized cost of useful thermal energy delivered. Finally, policy implications of the results obtained have been discussed.

An attempt to estimate the potential of solar crop drying for some selected cash crops in India has been made. The amount of cash crops that can be dried by solar dryers and the required aperture area of solar dryers have been estimated. Estimates for unit cost of solar drying for different crops have also been worked out. The potential of net fossil C[O.sub.2] emissions mitigation due to the amounts of different fuels that would be saved by solar drying has been estimated along with the unit cost of C[O.sub.2] emissions mitigation. Keywords: Solar crop drying; Cash crops; Potential estimation; C[O.sub.2] emissions

Development and dissemination of solar energy technologies in India has been aided by a variety of policy and support measures. One of the promotional measures is the provision of financial and fiscal incentives such as capital subsidy, low interest loan and accelerated depreciation related income tax benefits to the users on the purchase of solar energy technologies. In this study an attempt has been made to determine the effective capital cost of solar energy technologies to the user with the provision of financial and/or fiscal incentives. Results of exemplifying calculations for a domestic and an industrial solar water heating system, a solar home lighting system and a solar drying system have been presented and discussed. Keywords: Financial and fiscal incentives; Effective capital cost; Solar energy technologies

An attempt has been made to evaluate the financial feasibility of hybrid power supply option during real-time grid power unavailability (continuous and intermittent) conditions and determine the optimal hybrid power supply configurations for outdoor telecom towers in India. As grid power availability is highly dependent on locations, a review of real-time hourly grid power supply availability for telecom towers at 36 locations in different parts of India has also been presented. Ten different locations across different climatic zones were analyzed, and it was found that duration and continuity (continuous and intermittent) of power outages considerably affect the LCOE of different configurations. So it is imperative that these factors be taken into account when determining the optimal hybrid power system. Solar PV-based hybrid power supply systems were found to have lower LCOE for all power outage conditions both in continuous as well as intermittent with their values in the range of Indian rupees (INR) 6.76–INR 26.32 (US $0.095–US $0.371) per kWh for the optimal cases (1 US$ = INR 76.28 (As on April 27, 2020)). While solar PV with battery is found to be the least cost hybrid power supply options for the telecom towers located in areas with continuous grid power unavailability up to 4 h, a diesel generator also needs to be included for larger hours of continuous grid unavailability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution of power because of the nonconventional energy sources is enhancing day by day. This gives rise to power converter connected to the grid for an integration and to utilize the nonconventional energy sources economically and efficiently. However, this causes the distortion in the grid voltages and currents. All advanced high precision operating machines and measuring instruments are sensitive to the harmonics of the grid voltages. Therefore, this work illustrates an improved control to supress the grid voltage and current harmonics caused by an integration of non‐conventional energy source and nonlinear loads. An enhanced resonant two‐degree of freedom proportional–integral–derivative (ER‐2‐DOF‐PID) controller is used to extract fundamental components from load currents. It uses a resonant controller in shunt with PI controller to suppress the multi‐order harmonics and steady state error. A DC‐offset is used in parallel of this combination to suppress the sub‐order harmonics. To suppress the peak overshoot during the load transients and insolation changes, a 2‐DOF‐PID controller is used. The presented control is investigated by developing its model in MATLAB environment and this is validated on a prototype developed in the laboratory. The controller is modelled and investigated for stability analysis using a Bode mathematical tool.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An adaptive approach based on a neural network is presented here for the control of a grid interactive solar power generating system. This control approach is based on a summation and a product neuron, which are used to process the non‐linearity of load currents. A sigmoidal and Gaussian functions are used to linearise the response of summation and product neurons. In this control, the product and summation neurons, and sigmoidal and Gaussian functions are within a single layer, which reduces the complexity of control. This control algorithm is superior over artificial neural network (ANN)‐based control algorithm, which has large number of unknown weights and layers. It reduces the computational burden and complexity of the control algorithm. It shows the inherent improved performance at non‐linear balanced and unbalanced loads. The control of net active and reactive components of the power separately improves the efficacy of the control at unbalanced non‐linear load and reduces the voltage transients in the grid voltages. The ANN‐based control also plays an active role in enhancing the power quality of the grid. The reduced complexity of control and direct power feed forward of photovoltaic array (PVA) to the grid improve the dynamic response of the grid‐connected PVA‐based system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]