Solar Photovoltaic Testing Facility

In this paper, a standalone Hybrid power generation
system with improved power quality is proposed. The proposed
system consisting of Wind energy conversion system (WECS),
Diesel generator system, PV generation system and Battery
energy storage system (BESS).A hybrid system consists of wind,
solar PV, diesel generator, battery, and a controller. Tip Speed
Ratio (TSR) control with Field Oriented Control (FOC), method
was used for implementing Maximum Power Point Tracking
(MPPT) for wind system, variable step Perturb & Observing
(P&O) method for solar and optimum fuel consumption
technique for Diesel engine. MATLAB/Simulink was used to
build the model and simulate the system. The result shows the
better performance of the system under the variation of input
constraints as well as output constraints.

The world’s wind resource is abundant, and has great development potential. In the traditional low rated wind generator, the mechanical friction
resistance between the bearings is too large, due to low wind speed in the city, usually it can’t start up when the wind speed is not big enough, whereas the
high rated ones produce lot of noise. In both cases the AMBs can be used to overcome their problems. Magnetic bearing is a mechanical and electrical
integration bearing which suspends and stabilizes the rotor with the electromagnetic force, compared with the general bearings, for no mechanical friction,
the damping of small wind generator with AMB can be minimized; power consumption is about 1/10 of ordinary bearings, which makes the wind generator
start up with low-speed wind. Active Magnetic Bearings (AMB) have many advantages such as no friction loss, no abrasion, lubrication free quality, and
used for high rotational speed applications. A complete AMB system consists of an actuator, power amplifier, a rotor position sensor and a control system. In
this paper, a closed loop decentralized Fuzzy Logic controller for Active magnetic Bearings is designed. For the numerical evaluation of control algorithm a
MIMO (multiple input multiple output) mathematical model of the controlled plant is determined. The AMB system which is open-loop unstable and highly
coupled due to nonlinearities inherited in the system such as gyroscopic effect and mass imbalance requires dynamic controller that can stabilize the system.
The majority of industrial applications of active magnetic bearings were still based on conventional PID control system. The proposed control design is based
on rule based procedure. It has been shown, that the presented FL control guarantees satisfactory high damping, low parameter variations and measurement
noise of the overall system. The designed FL controller is able to maintain the rotor in centre position in the final steady state. Simulations are provided to
illustrate the performance of the controller. This Paper deals with developing a model of an Active Magnetic Bearing (AMB), and its 1-DOF, 2-DOF, 4-DOF
model using a Fuzzy controller. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is compared with the conventional PID controller.

/Summary: PV Technologies having same power rating with different configuration are selected for this study. Insulation Test is performed for 2 minutes at 1000 V on the modules which are kept in the environmental chamber. A Temperature dosage in the increments of 10°C, ranging from 10°C to 80°C is applied on the modules. The insulation resistance, leakage current, Dielectric Absorption ratio and capacitance readings were noted down at each interval. All the modules have fulfilled the criteria of IEC 61215, IEC 61646.  From the Observations, it was found that the insulation resistance decreases with increase in temperature. In addition to that, a generalized model of insulation of PV module in terms of resistance and capacitance was built and simulated.

Estimation of solar radiation is of considerable importance because of the increasing requirement for the design, optimization and performance evaluation of the solar energy systems. This paper presents the development of pattern similarity based clustering algorithm and its application in solar radiation estimation. In the present work continuous density, Hidden Markov Model (HMM) with Pearson R model is utilized for the extraction of shape based clusters from the input meteorological parameters and it is then processed by the Generalized Fuzzy Model (GFM) to accurately estimate the solar radiation. Instead of using distance function as an index of similarity here shape/patterns of the data vectors are used as the similarity index for clustering, which overcomes few of the shortcomings associated with distance based clustering approaches. The estimation method used here exploits the pattern identification prowess of the HMM for cluster selection and generalization and nonlinear modeling capabilities of GFM to predict the solar radiation. The data of solar radiation and various meteorological parameters (sun shine hour, ambient temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and atmospheric pressure) to carry out the present work is taken from the comprehensive weather monitoring station made at Solar Energy Centre, Gurgaon, India. To consider the effect of each meteorological parameter on the estimation of solar radiation the proposed model is applied on 15 different sets comprising of various combinations of input meteorological parameters. The meteorological data of three years from 2009 to 2011 (915 days) is used to estimate the solar radiation. Out of these 915 days data, the first 750 days data is used for the training of the proposed paradigm and rest 165 days data is used for validating the model. The results of estimation using all the sets of various combination of meteorological parameter are analyzed and it is found that the sunshine duration is the prime parameter for the estimation of solar radiation. The next important parameter, which influences the estimation of solar radiation, is temperature followed by relative humidity, atmospheric pressure and wind speed. It is interesting to note that worse results are obtained for the sets which are not using sunshine duration as an input. The best performance is achieved by the set which uses all the parameters except the wind speed. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) and correlation co-efficient (R-value) of the proposed paradigm for the best performing combination of meteorological parameter are 7.9124, 3.0083 and 0.9921 respectively which shows that the proposed model results are in good agreement with the actual measured solar radiation.

A high performance white light emitting diode (WLED) based PV lighting system has been developed under a joint project of SEC and ANERT. The system has been analyzed using the test set-ups developed as a part of advanced lighting laboratory (ALL). The results show that the performance is one of the best among the systems developed in the capacity range.

Test arrays of thin film modules have been deployed at the Solar Energy Centre near New Delhi, India since 2002-2003. Performances of these arrays were reported by O.S. Sastry [1]. This paper reports on NREL efforts to support SEC by performing detailed characterization of selected modules from the array. Modules were selected to demonstrate both average and worst case power loss over the 8 years of outdoor exposure. The modules characterized included CdTe, CIS and three different types of a-Si. All but one of the a-Si types were glassglass construction. None of the modules had edge seals. Detailed results of these tests are presented along with our conclusions about the causes of the power loss for each technology.

This paper presents the analysis of visual degradation data collected during an All-India Survey of Photovoltaic Module Degradation conducted in 2013, in which 57 crystalline silicon modules were inspected in the five different climatic zones of India. Analysis of the data indicates that the highest percentage of modules suffered discoloration in the Hot and Dry climatic zone, with the Hot and Humid zone coming in second in the list. A higher percentage of modules have suffered corrosion in the Hot and Humid zone, as compared with other zones. The modules installed in the Cold climate suffered the least degradation. Both discoloration and corrosion have been seen in modules across all age groups, even in some of the modules installed less than five years ago. On the other hand, delamination and backsheet degradation have been seen only in modules more than a decade old. The visual degradation data have been correlated with the electrical performance data and reaffirm the direct relation between encapsulant discoloration and reduction in short-circuit current and output power, as well as that of series resistance with metal corrosion.

Background: The current rate of infant mortality in India is 40/1000, two thirds of which is due to neonatal mortality1. Neonatal sepsis accounts for more than 50% of the neonatal mortality in India. Ideally the prompt culture of specimens – i.e. body fluids e.g. blood, urine, cerebro-spinal fluid, etc. – would help isolate and identify microorganisms causing infection and sepsis. The results of the lab tests will help clinicians to institute timely and appropriate antibiotics to the patient. This will culminate in an overall decrease in morbidity and mortality related to sepsis/infections. In resource-limited countries, in rural communities, there is a distinct lack of (functional) culture facilities; therefore, these specimens would require to be transported to the nearest well-equipped culture laboratory for processing, interpretation of the causative organism, and its sensitivity to antimicrobials. As the optimum temperature for bacteria culture such as the frequently used E. co...

Test arrays of thin film modules have been deployed at the Solar Energy Centre near New Delhi, India since 2002-2003. Performances of these arrays were reported by O.S. Sastry [1]. This paper reports on NREL efforts to support SEC by performing detailed characterization of selected modules from the array. Modules were selected to demonstrate both average and worst case power

In this paper, different aspects for installation of test beds have been presented based on the experience gained while planning and installation of test beds at Solar Energy Centre (SEC), Gurgaon, India. It covers the essential instruments details and strategy required to measure vital parameters, data logging and software requirements. Using modern technology and software techniques, with this installation it is possible to sense and log performance parameters and estimate performance indicators such as performance ratio (PR), final yields (Yf) and reference yields (Yr) of a site. This information is very important while planning of large PV installations. Paper explains installation of test beds by using an exemplary test beds based on three different PV technologies single junction amorphous silicon (a-Si) modules, Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin layer (HIT), Multi-crystalline silicon (c-Si) in conjunction with climate monitoring station, data logger and PV scanners for I-V m...

Life cycle metrics evolution specific to the climate zone of photovoltaic (PV) operation would give detailed insights on the environmental and economic performance. At present, vast literature is available on the PV life cycle metrics where only the output energies ignoring the degradation rate (DR) influence. In this study, the environ-economic analysis of three PV technologies, namely, multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si), amorphous silicon (a-Si) and hetero-junction with an intrinsic thin layer (HIT) have been carried out in identical environmental conditions. The energy performance parameters and the DR rate of three PV technologies are evaluated based on the monitored real time data from the installation site in hot semi-arid climates. The assessment demonstrates that the HIT PV module technology exhibits more suitable results compared to mc-Si and a-Si PV systems in hot semi-arid climatic conditions of India. Moreover, energy metrices which includes energy payback time (EPBT), en...