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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]

In a photovoltaic array (PVA) tied grid system, PVA and the grid are connected at AC bus (ACB) to feed the power to the grid and the load connected locally at the ACB. The photovoltaic energy conversion system (PVECS) requires an improved dynamic controller to control the grid voltage harmonics under variable solar power and nonlinear unbalanced load conditions. The conventional filtering controllers are unable to remove the sub‐harmonics and DC‐offset in the input signal. Moreover, their attenuation for the dominant lower order harmonics is unsatisfactory for unbalanced loading conditions and highly nonlinear loads. A MMLSTOGI (mixed multi‐level second and third order generalized integrator) based control is used in this work. It effectively mitigates the dominant lower‐order harmonics and the DC‐offset of load currents and extracts their in‐phase and quadrature‐phase fundamental components (FCs). The PVA is connected at ACB through interfacing voltage source converter (VSC). The DC‐link voltage is ascertained by generating its reference value using an incremental conductance (InC) based maximum power point tracking. The PVA power is feed‐forwarded in the control to enhance the dynamics of the system. The control is validated on a developed model in MATLAB SIMULINK background, and using a developed prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents an improved phase‐locked loop (IPLL)‐based control for grid‐integrated photovoltaic (PV) system (GIPVS). It is used to extract amplitude, frequency, and phase angle of distorted load currents to control PV‐grid‐interfaced voltage source converter (VSC). The VSC controls active and reactive powers at unbalances and distortions in the grid voltages. The control algorithm of VSC includes power feed‐forward term, DC‐link voltage, and grid voltages. The feed‐forward term improves the dynamic performance of a GIPVS and enhances the utilisation of VSC. Three‐phase IPLLs extract the in‐phase components of three‐phase load currents at utility frequency. Further, these in‐phase components of load currents are used for estimation of reference‐grid currents. The proposed IPLL‐based control algorithm offers good dynamic response even under unbalanced load condition. The efficient working of IPLL‐based control algorithm is realised by extracting maximum power from PV‐grid system and through its power‐quality improvement. The perturb and observe (P & O) control algorithm is used for optimum utilisation of a PV array. A developed prototype of PV‐grid system is used to implement an IPLL‐based control algorithm under different operating conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byline: Pallav Purohit, Tara C. Kandpal An attempt to develop a simple framework for techno-economic evaluation of windmills for irrigation water pumping has been made. The amounts of water delivered by five somewhat different designs of windmill pumps at different locations have been estimated. The unit cost of water delivered and unit cost of useful energy delivered by the windmills have been estimated. The monetary benefits that accrued to the end-user have been quantified in terms of the amount of diesel or electricity saved. The Net Present Value and Benefit-to-Cost Ratio for the investments made in windmill pumps have been estimated. The effect of fuel price escalation on these measures of financial performance has also been evaluated along with the estimation of the break-even prices of fuels likely to be substituted by windmill pumps.

For large-scale dissemination of solar thermal power plants, in countries identified with huge potential, governments are offering various incentives. In an attempt towards studying the effectiveness of various incentives in reducing the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) delivered by solar thermal power plants in India, this paper presents simple mathematical frameworks that facilitate the determination of the required level of an incentive so as to ensure that the LCOE is within a pre-specified limit. For example, for a 50 MW solar thermal power plant at Barmer (Rajasthan), LCOE of Rs. 9.75 per kWh can be achieved by providing 6.3% viability gap funding or an interest subsidy of 3% or provision of 32% investment tax credits to the equity investor or provision of production tax credits to the equity investor at the rate of Rs. 0.81 per kWh for first 10 years of operation of a plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results of a preliminary techno-economic appraisal of solar thermal power generation at three locations in India are presented. The study uses System Advisor Model developed by NREL, USA. The results of the study provide useful insight into (a) selecting appropriate reference direct normal irradiance for design of solar thermal power plants, (b) identifying suitable combinations of solar multiple and hours of thermal energy storage and (c) cost reduction potential. The parabolic trough technology is used for exemplifying the procedure for this purpose. The estimated levelised unit cost of electricity is in the range of Rs (US$1=Indian rupees 51.66 on 5 October 2012) 16–21 per kWh for the most likely range of input parameters. The results also indicate possibility of about 30% reduction in unit cost of electricity by year 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: 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 CO2 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 CO2 emissions mitigation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The choice of condenser cooling option for concentrating solar power (CSP) plants is likely to affect their techno-economic feasibility. In view of this, an attempt has been made to assess relative techno-economics and net life cycle CO 2 -eq emissions mitigation (LCCM) potential for 50 MW nominal capacity wet-cooled and dry-cooled parabolic trough solar collector (PTSC) and dry-cooled solar power tower (SPT) based CSP plants with 6.0 h of thermal energy storage for two potential locations in India. It was observed that though dry cooling is likely to save significant amount of water (∼92%) in PTSC based plants, the same shall result in higher capital cost, higher performance penalty and higher parasitic power requirements leading to around 20% higher levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) as compared to wet-cooled PTSC based plants. It was also observed that the dry-cooled SPT based plants shall be able to deliver up to 4.5% higher annual electricity output and LCOE is also likely to be lowered by 13% than wet-cooled PTSC based plants. Considering emissions embodied and emissions associated with water transport/extraction from the source and water treatment, the estimation of LCCM from the PTSC and SPT based CSP plants have also been undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]