Design of a Low Voltage DC Mini-grid for Isolated Healthcare Centres
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13052/dgaej2156-3306.3729Keywords:
LVDC, solar PV system, islanded mini-grid, single point of failure, rural electrification.Abstract
Primary healthcare centres are essential to any inhabited place in the world.
A lack of electrical power from the grid should not be a reason for people
in remote rural areas to miss out on basic healthcare. In developing countries
like India, rural healthcare centres usually have intermittent or no grid supply
and run on diesel generator-based electricity or other conventional sources,
if at all there are such centres established. This, however, contributes to
environmental degradation and is also expensive to maintain, considering
fluctuating fuel prices. To turn the dependence on renewable energy sources
like photovoltaics would pave the way to sustainable energy production
and utilization, which costs less in the long run. This research work aims
at designing an islanded low voltage DC solar mini-grid that will provide
enough power to sustain a primary healthcare centre that has less to no access
to the national grid. Previous works in this context tend to rely on varying
extents of intermittent supply from the national grid, which may not be the
reality in most Indian rural areas. Additionally, an unreliable source of power from the grid which is also difficult to predict would make sensitive and
important loads less accessible.
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