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Questions regarding a Solar Grid Tied Inverter Development & Deployment

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Written By raju@solar - 14 July, 2013

Bangalore BESCOM Power suggestion Solar Power KREDL

We are a group of two Electronics Engineers working from past several months on building a GTI (Grid Tie Inverter).
The system is made up of only the Solar panel and Electronics. The power generated from the Solar panel is processed by the electronics and fed to the connected Grid.  All the Electronics was locally developed. We have our first 240W prototype (240Wp + Electronics, No batteries) presently in testing stage. To take this forward to a commercial product, we had a set of questions.
 
- Is it mandatory to get MNRE approval of our GTI ?
 
- What is the procedure for getting MNRE approval ?
 
- What are the costs involved in getting our GTI tested/certified by CPRI ?
 
- How much time does the certification process take ?
 
- We here a lot about State/Central Govt. subsidies for people investing in roof top solar PV, 
what are the requirements to avail this subsidy ?
 
- Do we need permision from BESCOM to install this GTI ?

COMMENTS

paging @sanjayv

silkboard - 15 July, 2013 - 06:18

Raju - SanjayV may be best placed to respond to some questions here. Trying to page him through this comment.

Some answers

sanjayv - 16 July, 2013 - 03:00

Sorry for being off the grid. I am getting killed at work.

Do not have all the anwers, but here are some responses.

- Is it mandatory to get MNRE approval of our GTI ?
Not that I am aware of.  Grid tie at LV and for small capacities is still not allowed in most India states.  That is the bigger challenge.
 
- What is the procedure for getting MNRE approval ?
See above.
- What are the costs involved in getting our GTI tested/certified by CPRI ?
You will have to contact CPRI for that.  key question would be the standards you have designed the Inverter to?  Have you looked at applicable IEC/IEEE standards?  Do you meet all the protection requirements? How about THD and other power quality requirements? What do you want CPRI to certify your inverter to?  Are you considering other certification like UL for the future?
 
Power utilities will not let people use your inverter without meeting all requirements of a proper international standard.  I do not rememeber the numbers off the top of my head, but you can easily find data online on the relevant ones.
 
 
- How much time does the certification process take ?
No idea.  First you need to check if they will certify?
 
- We here a lot about State/Central Govt. subsidies for people investing in roof top solar PV, 
what are the requirements to avail this subsidy ?
Really.  There are no subsidies for grid tie that I am aware of.  Most of them seem to be for islanded stand alone systems.  Grid connection seems to be only allowed beyond a certain scale.
 
- Do we need permision from BESCOM to install this GTI ?
Yes.  And most importantly approval from the Electrical inspectorate.  There is still no rpocess for that.
 
This is the best information I have, though it is a bit dated.  Lot of information is available online... please go check that out.

Hi SanjayV, thanks a lot for

raju@solar - 18 July, 2013 - 16:13

Hi SanjayV, thanks a lot for your valuable information.

The Govt. of AP and Kerala seem to have a clear policy on rooftop solar for small scale and residential installations, though not clearly expressed, these would mostly be on LT grids..

Will keep you guys posted once I have more concrete information.

 

This is nice concept. The

Bheema.Upadhyaya - 20 July, 2013 - 06:46

This is nice concept. The battery is the bottleneck and takes partially away "green energy" tag from a solar installation. I have installation of 3 panels at home, so called smart SPU (Solar Power Conditioners). As per the claim, the SPU is supposed to convert panel power and suppy to circuit when battery is full.

Originally my idea was to have Panels to feed my circuits directly like your project thus eliminating battery. Now I see some hope once your project becomes success.

PS: I dont mind becoming a "tester" for your project :) to get rid of battery when there is abundant sunlight to power my CFL lights.

I use Grid Tie system

r2mys - 29 July, 2014 - 13:17

I know I am replying to an old thread, but it is relevant to the community. I have been running a Grid tied system at a very small scale(140 W) in my apartment for last 3.5 yrs, and have been successfully feeding back energy to the grid. It is possible to use a grid tie system, as long as the energy consumed during the day is more than the energy produced(small scale kits) by solar panels. This has helped me in reduce my electricity bills to some extent.

if we produce more energy than what is consumed, then the excess energy produced will be billed back to the consumer, even though you are feeding it back to the grid. This is because the electricity meters are unidirectional.

 

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