solar Irradiation

1. SOLAR IRRADIATION POTENTIAL OF VELAMMAL
ENGINEERING COLLEGE-A BASIC STUDY
A.B.Vijay Basker ,Dr.V.R.Manoj (Professor)
Velammal Engineering College, Surapet, Chennai-66.
ABSTRACT
Solar Energy is one of the most prominent forms of
Renewable energy presently and abundantly
available. The Indian Government’s Ministry for New
and Renewable Resources (MNRE) has launched the
National Solar Mission to promote the use of Solar
energy throughout the country (started in 2009 and
aimed to set up 20,000 MW of grid connected solar
power). However, it is not easy to implement Solar
energy in all regions with equal efficiency. While
majority of the efficiency issue rests with solar panel
efficiency; the rate of Solar irradiation plays a key role
in the duration of harnessed energy by a solar device.
In this basic study, an assessment was made on the
Solar irradiation falling in India, Tamilnadu, Chennai
and finally on the area where our Institution is
currently located. The amount of solar irradiation
(measured from data available from MNRE and Solar
Radiation Assessment stations (SRRA)) incident on
the same was ascertained and it could be partially
determined whether it is feasible to have solar power
implemented on a large scale in the campus. A
thorough understanding of this can lead to
ascertaining suitability of CSP technology or
Photovoltaic technology.
Index terms: solar power, irradiation map, feasibility
study
INTRODUCTION
In 2009, the Indian Ministry for New and Renewable
Energy (MNRE) launched its ambitious Jawaharlal
Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) under which it
has set a target of installing solar power . This 20 GW
capacity of solar power will be equally divided into
Solar Photovoltaic (PV) and Concentrating Solar
Power (CSP) technologies, representing an
installation of 10 GW of each technology in
approximately 12 years. This has caused a rapid
growth and development of CSP industry in India. In
the first phase of JNNSM from 2010-2013 CSP
projects with capacity of 470 MW were auctioned,
which should be commissioned before May 2013. In
addition the reverse bidding mechanism has made
the market even more competitive, with companies
bidding far lower prices than those existent in the
international CSP market. Lanco Solar Pvt. Ltd. was
very aggressive in offering maximum discount bidding
a price of 10.49 INR/kWh approximately 129
EUR/MWh [1]. As per the current plans, another 3000
MW of solar power plants will be developed in India
before 2017. It is well known that the Indian CSP
companies will have to overcome many hurdles in
order to meet the aggressive prices they have quoted.
However, it is assumed that if the Indian CSP
companies manage to build and operate CSP plants at
such low prices, it might be a game-changer for the
global CSP industry. Apart from catering to the local
CSP market, Indian EPC companies might start
offering their services to foreign markets resulting in
lower prices and rapid deployment of CSP.
All CSP technologies need to concentrate sunlight. As
optical concentration cannot be achieved based on
diffuse light coming from various directions, only the
direct beam irradiance component is relevant for
CSP. A CSP plant converts direct beam irradiance into
thermal energy, and ultimately into electrical power.
This is done by means of high temperatures and
efficient heat-to-electricity conversion systems, such
as steam turbines. Hence, direct sunlight or beam
irradiance is the key resource for any concentrating
solar system.
Until around 2008 availability of solar radiation maps
of India was quite limited. Besides worldwide data
sets in coarse resolution like NASA-SSE [2] there was
the Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) map provided
by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD)
based on interpolation of ground-based
measurements [3].

2. Additionally time-series and maps based on ground-
based measurements and model-derived solar
radiation values of DNI and GHI also can be obtained
from the Meteonorm software [4]. In 2009 NREL
released its first version of a satellite-based solar
radiation map providing GHI and DNI covering the
North West of the country. In 2010 an updated
version was released by NREL, which then covered
entire India. Meanwhile several commercial satellite-
derived data sets became available like 3TIER (2011),
the Solemi data set of DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für
Luft- und Raumfahrt – German Aerospace Center),
the iMaps data of GeoModel Solar [5], and the data
from IrSOLaV [6]. But the uncertainty of solar
radiation data in India is still very high [7]. Ground
truth of the satellite-derived data sets is still widely
missing. All of these have resulted in demand of high
quality solar resource data for India.
The high uncertainty of solar radiation data is acting
as a hurdle to the development of solar power plants
in India. As a result, to provide a solid database for
solar energy deployment in India MNRE is funding
the project Solar Radiation Resource Assessment
(SRRA) at Centre for Wind Energy Technology (C-
WET). The SRRA-project is mainly covering the set up
and operation of a countrywide collection system of
solar radiation data. In 2011 a network of 51 solar
radiation measurement stations distributed all over
most states of India was erected. These stations are
measuring direct, diffuse and global irradiance with
high quality.
OBJECTIVE
In order to avoid the upcoming demand for the
Electricity in the world the renewable resources are
used in now a day to overcome that one of the way
to overcome the demand is Solar power resource
which is freely and abundant in nature which will be
available for the lifetime and they are easily
renewable. It is the process of producing the current
by using the heat emitted from the suns radiation
and converting it into the electricity by the certain
process.
Solar energy is the oldest primary source of energy. It
is clean, renewable and abundant in every part of the
world. Almost all energies are derived from solar
energy. However, it is possible to convert solar energy
into mechanical or electrical energy with adequate
efficiency. The radiation from the sun travels in the
space as Electromagnetic Wave. Above the Earth’s
atmosphere, sunlight carries 1367 watts of power per
square meter. This is known as Solar Constant. We
define solar constant as the amount of solar radiation
received outside the earth’s atmosphere on a unit area
perpendicular to the rays of the sun at the mean
distance of the earth from the sun.
The Earth receives 1.8 X 1017
W of the incoming solar
radiation continuously at the top of its atmosphere. But
only half of its reaches the earth surface. Factors like
Absorption, Scattering and Reflection of the light
during its passage through the atmosphere are
responsible for reduction of the amount of solar
radiation available on the earth’s surface. Solar energy
is by nature, a low-density energy source
It is the basic study that by erecting the solar panels it
is sufficient to produce the required power or the
current in the campus.
CONCEPTUAL IDEA WITH ANALYSED RESULT
The radiation from the sun travels in the space as
Electromagnetic Wave. Above the Earth’s
atmosphere, sunlight carries 1367 watts of power per
square meter. This is known as Solar Constant. We
define solar constant as the amount of solar radiation
received outside the earth’s atmosphere on a unit
area perpendicular to the rays of the sun at the mean
distance of the earth from the sun.
The Earth receives 1.8 X 1017
W of the incoming solar
radiation continuously at the top of its atmosphere.
But only half of its reaches the earth surface. Factors
like Absorption, Scattering and Reflection of the light
during its passage through the atmosphere are
responsible for reduction of the amount of solar
radiation available on the earth’s surface. Solar
energy is by nature, a low-density energy source.

3. The radiation from the sun travels in the space as
Electromagnetic Wave. Above the Earth’s
atmosphere, sunlight carries 1367 watts of power per
square meter. This is known as Solar Constant. We
define solar constant as the amount of solar radiation
received outside the earth’s atmosphere on a unit
area perpendicular to the rays of the sun at the mean
distance of the earth from the sun.
The Earth receives 1.8 X 1017
W of the incoming solar
radiation continuously at the top of its atmosphere.
But only half of its reaches the earth surface. Factors
like Absorption, Scattering and Reflection of the light
during its passage through the atmosphere are
responsible for reduction of the amount of solar
radiation available on the earth’s surface. Solar
energy is by nature, a low-density energy source.
Where the India is the daily producer of nearly 0.2kwh
per meter square of land area is used, which is
equivalent to about 1400-1800 peak capacity
operating hours and stands an average producer of
nearly which satisfies the one third of the country and
leads to the production of nearly 73kwh per meter
square of land area where in Tamil Nadu the southern
part of India located near the Bay of Bengal which
receives moderate amount of radiation which leads in
the production of solar energy and the amount of
energy produced in our state leads the average
production. Were the world’s largest solar production
plant about 2500 acres of land area is located on
Tamil Nadu which has the capacity of 650MWof clean
power and able to produce the electricity to 1.5 lakh
homes in Tamil Nadu.
Where the Chennai is located on the top of the Tamil
Nadu and located near the coastal line here also some
amount of energy is produced per year using solar
irradiation the average amount if power produced
per year in Chennai is of nearly of 5.51kwh per meter
square on a day where our Velammal Engineering
College is located in Chennai under the municipality
of Ambattur which has an total area of nearly 39km
and they are of 127919.95ft, under which our college
comes our college is located near the largest lake in
Chennai which names Puzhal and our college has an
area of 75 acres among which the playground is
covered by 25 acres, nearly 2 acres for car parking and
the student parks and nearly 2 acres for the small
shops around college and the roads. Then the
remaining 46 acres is of the Department buildings
where we can able to erect a solar power plant and
we could be able to produce some amount of energy
per year which will reduce the cost of the electricity
bill by 20% on my analysis which can be able to
produce nearly 0.3kwh in our campus
TYPES OF SOLAR PANEL
1. Polycrystalline solar panels
Polycrystalline panels are made of silicon cells,
which is combination of multiple small silicon
crystals. This is the reason, why their surface is not
homogeneous, thus, they are slightly less efficient and
simultaneously less expensive. They are commonly
used in residential buildings and in large solar panels
2. Monocrystalline solar panels
Monocrystalline panels are composed of
individual cells that are formed of a homogeneous
silicon crystal with systematic internal structure. They
are formed by cutting the silicon block of appropriate
size, for layers thick of about 0.3mm
Finally, the obtained power is stored in the storage
unit and utilized for various uses and in micro
controller if 10-watt power is obtained from the solar
panel setup and some part of energy has to be utilized
by the microcontroller unit and in the proposed idea is
not utilized by any other unit and entirely stored in the
battery for various purposes and by this it can be said
that it is more efficient when compared to the
conventional solar tracking by micro controller
And only disadvantage is less sensitive compared to
the micro controller solar tracking