Lighting, fans and electronic devices form a significant and growing portion of power-load at homes and need power back-up support in case there are frequent power-cuts. A Diesel generator is generally used today in multi-storied buildings to provide this backup. The DC system, proposed in this paper, provides a far more energy-efficient alternative using renewable power-source for backup. It creates a pull for a home to move towards far more energy efficient DC loads. The solution provides a GREEN option to the existing solution. This paper provides a fresh perspective on the problem of eliminating conversion losses for uninterrupted operation of DC appliances. A cost benefit analysis shows that this DC system can reduce costs to the consumer by eliminating the complex electronics embedded in the inversion process. A rough measurement of the conversion losses for commercially available inverters and battery chargers illustrates that gains of 30% to 45% are easily obtainable © 2015 IEEE.

Ashok Jhunjhunwala

Department of Electrical Engineering

Cost effectiveness

Economic analysis

Electric power distribution

Energy efficiency

CONVERSION LOSS

DC POWER

LVDC

Micro grid

MULTI-STORIED BUILDINGS

Solar

Cost benefit analysis

IIT Madras is a public technical and research university located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Founded in 1959, it is recognised as an Institute of National Importance.

IIT Madras has been ranked as the top engineering institute in India for four years in a row by the National Institutional Ranking Framework of the MHRD

It currently offers undergraduate, postgraduate and research degrees across 16 disciplines in Engineering, Sciences, Humanities and Management. About 596 faculty belonging to science and engineering departments and centres of the Institute are engaged in teaching, research and industrial consultancy.

IIT Madras

Economic analysis of deployment of DC power and appliances along with solar in urban multi-storied buildings

2015 IEEE 1st International Conference on Direct Current Microgrids, ICDCM 2015

India is a power deficit country and one third of its homes are off grid or near off grid. This paper presents an efficient and affordable Solar DC solution for powering such homes. Though several solutions have emerged in the past for powering these homes, those have been expensive and energy inefficient. These solutions rely on several DC to AC and AC to DC conversions, to feed the widely used AC home loads, thus, wasting a large chunk of the expensive power. The proposed Solar DC solution for off-grid homes (OGH) is developed to use the generated PV power efficiently. With this solution, the panel and battery size is reduced by 2 to 2.5 times and the cost to power a house is reduced to nearly half the cost of the existing solutions. The paper also presents a techno-economic comparison between the proposed OGH solution with some existing solar systems. © 2015 IEEE.

Solar-DC deployment experience in off-grid and near off-grid homes: Economics, technology and policy analysis

Various statistics indicate that many of the parts of India, especially rural and island areas have either partial or no access to electricity. The main reason for this scenario is the immense expanse of which the power producing stations and the distribution hubs are located from these rural and distant areas. This emphasizes the significance of subsidiarity of power generation by means of renewable energy resources. Although in current energy production scenario electricity supply is principally by AC current, a large variety of the everyday utility devices like cell phone chargers, computers, laptop chargers etc. all work internally with DC power. The count of intermediate energy transfer steps are significantly abridged by providing DC power to mentioned devices. The paper also states other works that prove the increase in overall system efficiency and thereby cost reduction. With an abundance of solar power at disposal and major modification in the area of power electronic conversion devices, this article suggests a DC grid that can be used for a household in a distant or rural area to power the aforementioned, utilizing Solar PV. A system was designed for a household which is not connected to the main grid and was successfully simulated for several loads totaling to 250 W with the help of an isolated flyback converter at the front end and suitable power electronic conversion devices at each load points. Maximum abstraction of operational energy from renewable sources at a residential and commercial level is intended with the suggested direct current systems.

Fulltext

Energies

DC Grid for Domestic Electrification

International Transactions on Electrical Energy Systems

High-gain-high-power (HGHP) DC-DC converter for DC microgrid applications: Design and testing

Journal	Data powered by Typeset2015 IEEE 1st International Conference on Direct Current Microgrids, ICDCM 2015
Publisher	Data powered by TypesetInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Open Access	No