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ABSTRACTIndia achieved a significant milestone by enabling electric access to all villages in April 2018. More importantly, the focus is now on stable and regular electric supply. Government of India’s various modifications in the Electricity Acts, revised Tariff Policy, and various State-level policies along with other market-friendly incentives together have increased Roof Top Photo Voltaic (RTPV) system installation rates and capacity in India over the last decade. Yet, key regulatory and operational issues are observed in the RTPV market set-up during the study (2016–2018), delaying adoption of the roof top PV systems in India. These include skills for solar panel installations, maintenance and higher costs of operations. Research is required to develop interconnectivity, designing and installation-related engineering skills. The solar market analysis has emphasised that awareness among users, ease of installation and energy payback time as important parameters considered for technology diffusion. Typical north Indian market observed through interviews and an experiment using 1.5 kW domestic RTPV system experimental set-up and Energy Pay Back Time of the RTPV system in India is 8.61 years owing to market barriers and lack of skilled manpower. RTPV system brings reduction in the CO2emission as compared to the coal-based plant.

The objective of this research is to design a higher order Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) for a Static Synchronous Compensator (STATCOM) and investigation of its implication on power system stability improvement. The theory of Super-Twisting–Sliding-Mode-Control (STSMC) is applied to determine the nonlinear control law of a STATCOM. The STSMC based control combines 2-sliding control and Robust Exact Differentiator (RED) which can efficiently mitigate the effect of external disturbance to the system The purpose of the application of the STSMC based control method is that it not only solves the chattering problem of classical SMC but also the derived control law is independent of system parameters. The efficacy of the design of the proposed STATCOM controller has been investigated in comparison to both the nonlinear (via exact linearization) and conventional (via approximate linearization) Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) based STATCOM controller. An IEEE type 14 bus multi-machine system has been taken into consideration to study the simulation results with regard to the transient stability improvement in multiple operating scenarios. It has been revealed from the simulation results that the proposed control scheme based on STSMC is more effective with respect to both the exact linearization based as well as approximately linearization based approach for the design of STATCOM controller. Furthermore, it has been abstracted that the STSMC based nonlinear STATCOM controller is competent to mitigate the dynamic instability of an electric power system even under contingency and different loading conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work discusses an enhanced optimal solution for electrifying an individual rural consumer in a northern Indian village. The optimisation and sizing assessment is based on the techno-economic and socio-environmental parameters. The real-time market-based design variables have been considered for the present investigation. The renewable resources are assessed by the PDAV tool from NASA linked to the HOMER-Pro software tool. A stand-alone hybrid renewable energy system is designed for the domestic load of 55.14 kWh/day and 11.71 kW peak demand. The comparative analysis finds the stand-alone Solar Photovoltaic and Wind energy hybrid renewable energy system suitable. The net present and energy costs are determined as $34,344 and 0.152$/kWh for an optimized Hybrid System. In the present work, the employment creation with social aspects of the renewable energy system is analysed in a distinguished manner. A novel approach is adapted for the environmental effect of hybrid energy systems. The sensitivity analysis and robustness viability has been performed for the optimized arrangement. In the scope of optimal sizing, an equivalent model of the hybrid energy system is recreated in Matlab/Simulink. Each Matlab/Simulink model section is analysed separately with better technical aspects for the different input parameters.

•A review on the performance analysis of the solar photovoltaic system is presented.•The performance analysis of the 4.98 kWp solar photovoltaic system has been investigated using System Advisor Model for Indian islands.•As per IEC 61724 standards, the performance indices have been evaluated.•Effect of various tracking systems on the performance of solar photovoltaic system has been analysed.•Analysis found that the annual energy productions can be enhanced up to 25% using the tracking system.

It is evident that renewable energy sources (RES), will soon be considered as primary energy source in electrical networks. However, the increased penetration of RES along with the variable charging profile of electric vehicles in the distribution grid will pose serious technical challenges such as network instability, protection malfunctioning, aggravated line, and low- and high-voltage ride through capabilities. Moreover, the frequent occurrence of natural disasters has posed different dimensional problems for distribution system engineers. Hence, owing to the immediate demand for resilient electrical systems, many researchers have presented planning and operating techniques for resiliency enhancement. Consequently, application of low-voltage ride through (LVRT) during grid transformation in small clusters has significant role. However, the implementation of LVRT in operational methods during the transformation of an electric grid after a natural disaster has a lean share in the literature. Moreover, the applicability of grid code during microgrid formation due to extreme events also drives the planning and operational methodology. Therefore, this article first substantiates the importance of grid codes and IEEE standards for the interconnection of RES plants into a grid. Additionally, the paper presents a succinct summary on various control strategies to overcome the challenges of fault ride through capability, reactive power support, and anti-islanding in integrated wind and solar plants. Thenceforth, the importance of LVRT visibility in resiliency enhancement validated by simulating the urban electrical grid using the DIgSILENT PowerFactory Software.

The array of photovoltaic cells converts solar power into electricity and generate a clean and renewable source of energy. For them to be efficient, they must constantly generate the maximum possible power under various environmental conditions. This is the well-known problem of tracking Maximum Power Point (MPP). The classical methods fall short as they are not able to cope with the changing environmental conditions. This work aims to track MPPT by employing Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) with a fuzzy reward mechanism introduced for better translation of continuous space into various levels of abstraction. The author simulates a model of a PV array connected to a variable load. The introduction of RL has provided an advantage as employing a Deep-Q learning algorithm makes the structure a model-free and thereby eliminates the various modeling parameters with their effect on the design. The designed setup renders 2.8 W of power under the maximum load conditions and has been able to track the maximum power under the different varying conditions of temperature and irradiations.

•Optimal sizing of solar photo-voltaic/diesel generator/battery hybrid system for isolated islands of India.•Exclusive techno-economic investigation of four different energy storage technologies for the above system.•Zinc bromine flow (ZBF) technology based hybrid system offers highest return of investment and renewable penetration with lowest simple payback period and pollutant emissions.•Sensitivity analysis of the ZBF integrated hybrid system using unique three-dimensional approach.

The Andaman and Nicobar island, an union territory of India, is a group of islands located in the Indian Ocean where 93.63% of total power is generated by the diesel generators for which solar photovoltaic (PV) generation system is a viable alternative to meet the load demand of the islands. The proposed paper presents the solar PV resource assessment, performance analysis, and evaluation of normalized performance indices obtained from 10 kWp solar PV array considered at the climatic conditions of five islands of Andaman and Nicobar, mainly Smith, Middle Andaman, Baratang, Car Nicobar and Katchal. The yearly mean normalized performance indices like array yield (Yarr), reference yield (Yref), final yield (Yfin), performance ratio (PR), array capture loss (Lcap), system loss (Lsys) and capacity factor (CF) have been evaluated. The variation of ambient temperature (Tamb) and cell temperature (Tcell) have also been presented. The obtained results show yearly mean capacity factor and performance ratio are in the range of (13.73–14.61)% and (64.70–64.93)%, respectively. The yearly mean array yield, reference yield, final yield, array capture loss and system loss are (3.66–3.90) h/d, (5.08–5.43) h/d, (3.30–3.51) h/d, (1.42–1.53) h/d and (0.37–0.39) h/d, respectively.

The hybrid combination (Photovoltaic, Fuel Cells, and Battery) has found to be best energy resources which provide a reliable micro-power system. The single-phase inverter is modelled using appropriate gate pulses and the three-phase systems are modelled by control techniques such as Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation (SPWM) and State Vector Pulse Width Modulation (SVPWM) for attaining AC power. In this paper, the modular approach and Multiple Input Single Control (MISC) is applied to single-phase and three-phase systems with SPWM and SVPWM respectively to achieve better output efficiency. The modular approach is introduced for the power quality problem in the micro system, and MISC maintains the constant dc-link voltage. Furthermore, the proposed method maintains the State of Charge (SOC) of the battery by controlling the converter switches. The proposed research methodology is executed in MATLAB/Simulink-R2014a (Version 8.3) tool. The simulation results demonstrate that the MISC-based three-phase AC system with SVPWM achieves better results with reduced distortion level than SPWM.