Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Technology is widely adopted electricity generation alternative due to its huge potential in harnessing solar energy as a renewable, reliable and sustainable source of electricity. Nepal receives around 300 days of sunshine in a year and possesses huge potential of hosting Grid Connected PV plants in Nepal's national grid which is primarily dominated by hydropower. This paper presents the technical details of proposed GCPV Project, based in Upper Mustang Region of Nepal, and discusses the challenges and their possible mitigating measures for such system in Nepalese Context. Further, buffer storage type GCPV is also analyzed to address the problem of power and frequency fluctuation caused by grid integration of such system.
Nepal receives solar irradiation in range of 3.6-6.2 kW h/m2/day, 4.7kW h/m2/day in average.
This level of irradiation is higher compared to many European countries where PV system has been extensively exploited. Upper Mustang region receives highest solar irradiation (up to 6.16kW h/m2/day) in Nepal, which could be utilized to generate electricity through Grid Connected Photovoltaic (GCPV) system. Nepal also has added advantage for such system. Firstly, since the temperature and solar irradiation both increases with increase in altitude, Nepal as a mountainous and hilly country has higher solar output potential. Secondly, cost of PV technology has declined around 80% since 2008 resulting into increased interest in Solar Power in recent days. A GCPV project is yet to come into commercial operation in Nepal.Owing to benefits of the system, Nepal's greater prospects in PV sector could be a leap forward in energy market of the country. PV system existing in Nepal accounts to a very small share of the country's overall energy generation. Hence, there is no well-proven scheme to design a large scale GCPV System in Nepal. This paper attempts on developing a general scheme to design the utility scale GCPV system compatible to hydropower prevalent Nepalese power scenario and presents measures to mitigate major challenges associated with grid-interconnection of such system. The necessity of GCPV system in Nepalese power scenario has also been presented by highlighting the benefits of such project along with design details of such project.To minimize the effects of intermittency of a large scale GCPV system to some extent, buffer storage system is put forth and its effects has been analyzed by simulating the GCPV system with and without such buffer system in MATLAB Simulink <ref>.
References[edit | edit source]
Timilsina, Ashutosh, and Binay Paudyal. "Technical design of a grid-connected photovoltaic system and its challenges in Nepalese power scenario." 2017 7th International Conference on Power Systems (ICPS). IEEE, 2017. [1]
Contact details[edit | edit source]
Ashutosh Timilsina ashutoshtimilsina@gmail.com