Indicators for the usability of solar energy in India for the development of Islanded microgrids

Abstract

1.2 billion people all over the world lack access to electricity, among them, 240 million live in India. Islanded microgrids can be an efficient solution to power remote villages. Solar resources are abundant in India and solar microgrids can be implemented with minimal technical know-how. To design efficient policy for remote electrification programs, the assessment of resources is fundamental. The available solar resource maps of India focus on local annual and monthly average Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI). This paper investigates whether the GHI average for the month with the lowest value (MinMonthlylr) is a more suitable parameter to describe the true usefulness of solar resources. Islanded solar microgrids were simulated for 30 sites spread all over India. The results show that the optimal microgrid design does not depend on MinMonthlyIr. Instead, the annual average GHI and the latitude have been found to be good predictors of the usefulness of solar energy resource, with an accuracy of more than 96.5% in predicting the cost of electricity, in 29 microgrids out of 30.