A renewable based nano-grid for smart rural residential application

This paper intends to illustrate an extensive feasibility study of Nanogrid based on renewable energy sources for an unelectrified rural community in Eastern Himalayas for meeting their residential electricity demand. The residential Nanogrid design is based on the various combinations between micro-hydrokinetics system (MHKS) and solar photovoltaics (PV) as primary energy sources with a battery-based storage system. Different architectures of nanogrid with varying combinations of primary energy sources with and without battery storage in an isolated and grid-interactive system are considered in the study. The grid-interactive system analysis outlined in this work is done for a fair comparison with off-grid solutions based on actual power tariffs of the region with an assumed net metering scheme. The target village comprises different residential building types classified by the local housing department scattered over the hills and some close to the river. The target site is situated in very rough mountain vegetation, and the residential buildings in the area are mainly bamboo-based with corrugated galvanized iron (CGI) sheets as their roofs. The results reveal that PV based nanogrid solutions are the most suitable and economical for Type-I single-storey residential building in off-grid and future grid-interactive architectures.