Improving Rural Electrification through Interconnected Solar Micro Grids

Abstract

Renewable energy based rural electrification system experiences fluctuation in generation efficiency due to various unpredictable dynamic changes such as solar irradiation levels, rainfall, dust accumulation, vegetation, etc. Due to these fluctuations the system experiences frequent power quality issues such as low voltage, power interruptions, operating frequency deviation, etc., leading to the degradation of the performance and reliability of these solar micro grid systems. In this paper micro grid cluster interconnection methodology is proposed to improve the efficiency of the system. To develop real-time decisions on energy management and micro grid interconnections, we have designed an IoT system that is capable to monitor and learn the dynamic changes in power quality to control the subsystems for improving the quality of service. In this work we have analysed the need of such a system in one of the rural community having solar micro grid deployment in South India. Based on the needs we have designed and developed an end-to-end system consisting of perception layer, network layer and application layer. Detailed experimentation and evaluation was performed in our laboratory and the performance results are discussed in this paper.