Types of Solar PV Power Plants
Updated: Aug 24, 2021
When you decide to install a rooftop solar pv plant on your roof of your home, you will feel overwhelmed with the diffrent types of options available. Each one has its own advantage and disadvantages, but in the end we will see why one of them can be considered a winner for you. The primary solar generation technology is the same for all, they all primarily consist of solar panels to convert sunlight to electricity. The storage and distribution of the electricity is a diffrent story for each type. Let's dive into the available options!
On-Gird or Grid tied Solar PV Plant
Off-Grid Solar PV Plant
Hybrid Solar PV Plant
On-Grid Solar Plants:
The electricity generated from the panels, is converted to usable AC current using grid tied inverter which is used to power the electrical loads in your house. This inverter uses the live input voltage and frequency from the gird to match the solar output to these parameters. Thus, the power can be directly be given to your household appliances and the two diffrent sources of energy won’t interfere with each other. You can see the working of these plants here.
They are primarily used to reduce your electricity bills and help you opt for a greener lifestyle, other than this you won’t notice any difference other than the rooftop solar panels installed. Another advantage is that you can choose to install any size of small plant depending on how much capital you wish to invest.
Off-Grid Solar Plants:
These plants work similar to the grid tied ones, just that they have batteries in them to store the solar energy to give out when there is low light conditions or night. They do this by using a battery charge controller to control the battery charging and discharging cycles. These kind of plants cannot run your household appliances directly with solar energy, but only from the batteries connected to the inverter. In case the batteries are completely charged all the excess solar energy is wasted. It’s even possible to live completely off the grid with this technology, click here to read more about this.
These plants are very important in places where normal grid power isn’t available or is not dependable. One time investment and you would have electricity at any remote place on Earth just with the sun! This technology has the power to uplift rural India where power is not dependable, read here for more details.
Hybrid Solar Plants:
These plants have the technical advantage of both the above two types. When the sun is out and energy is being generated, priority is given to charge the batteries and after the excess energy generated is then used to run household loads. Special solar hybrid inverters have this hardware and functionality inbuilt in them so they can function like an off-gird inverter when required and on-grid when needed. This being said, they require heavy investments while setting up and replacement of batteries when their life is over. Using long life Lithium batteries can reduce this cost down to a certain extent.
Such plants are feasible for people living in the urban area or the cities where you want to save money and also want to protect yourself from some less frequent power outages.
So, if you want to install a solar plant to reduce your electricity bills and go green then defiantly opt for a grid tied solar plant. In India you can get Centra Financial Assistance (CFA) on installing these plants on your rooftops, but be sure to know the real cost of claiming subsidy in case you are thinking of doing so. For places where you don't have electricity available from the grid or it is very unreliable, you should opt for the off grid solar plants. But you need to know that the plant is designed to run the loads which you already have installed. In case you add any major energy consuming devices, then the plant can fail.
If you are in India and looking to install any of these solar or renewable energy related plants be sure to check out our offerings and do get in touch with us if you need any more detail. You can find our contact details on our homepage here.
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