St. Vincent Pallotti College of Engineering is
an Autonomous Institution situated in Nagpur, recently purchased “Renewable
Energy Lab” from Ecosense.
The Renewable Energy Lab consists of the
following equipment:
1. Solar PV Training and Research System
2. Solar Thermal Training System
3. Wind Energy Training System
Ecosense’s Solar PV Training and research system enables user to learn about Solar PV standalone technology. Using
this system, a user gains knowledge in three fields of Solar PV Standalone
system:
a.) Physics of Solar PV Panels — I-V and P-V characteristics, series and parallel connection of solar panels effect of irradiation, effect of temperature, effect of shadow, effect of tilting of panels, effect of geographical location etc.
b.) Components and Assembly of standalone system — use of blocking diode, use of bypass diode, use of solar charge controller, use of solar inverter, difference between MPPT and PWM charge controllers, AC load, DC load, battery charging/ discharging characteristics, assembly of several components and power flow calculations in each branch.
c.) Research in PV systems — Ecosense separately provides a research unit along with
standalone experimental system. User can initiate research in the area of
maximum power point tracking using this unit. It has provision of providing
automatic as well as manual gate signals to charge controller. User can use
his/ her own MPPT algorithm with any of the controller to provide manual gate
signals.
Solar Thermal Training System is a small model of real time water heating system and can be used for the characterization and different heat transfer analysis. Different aspects like efficiency, overall heat loss coefficient and heat removal factor and their corresponding calculations can be demonstrated with the help of this system. Special feature of this system is to perform experiments with different wind speeds, different fluid temperatures and different flow speeds.
This system can be divided in three parts viz. main collector system,
measuring unit and artificial light unit. Main Collector system consists of a
Flat Plate collector with temperature, flow and pressure sensors to measure
temperature, flow and pressure of fluid. Measuring unit consists of a
measurement panel displaying different parameters and Artificial light unit/
heat generating unit is a Halogen lamp panel to uniformly illuminate the flat
plate collector inside a Lab.
Artificial Light facilitates a user to do his/her work without depending
on climatic changes in the environment.
Modular and scalable design of the system allows user to move the system in and out of lab easily and conduct experiment with artificial lights as well as actual sunlight. Using the system, a user will be able to study and understand working and operation of a flat plate collector water heating system and its two modes of operation.
The system helps students in practical understanding of various technical
parameters such as Overall heat loss coefficient, heat removal factor and
efficiency at different varying input parameters like radiation, wind speed,
inclination angle etc. The system has inbuilt sensors which measure parameters
like pressure, temperature and flowrate placed at different locations in the
system. The system has a datalogging device which automatically records and
saves all the readings.
Wind Energy Training System is a scaled down version of actual standalone Wind Turbine power plant. This system facilitates the students with working and configurable model of wind turbine. This system gives the insight about individual components and consequences of changing the operating points of any wind turbine defined in terms of wind speed and pitch angle. Students can learn concepts like I-V characteristic, cut-off, cut-in speed etc.
This system is developed such that it can work inside a closed
laboratory with an artificial wind generating unit, which makes it weather
proof. User can access and utilize the system capability at any time of the day
without worrying about the actual climatic conditions. This system uses a big
fan mounted on top of an Induction motor, the speed of which can be controlled
by a Variable Frequency Drive. User can control the speed of motor which
further controls the Wind speed using the Variable Frequency Drive. The
variable wind speed prompts Wind Turbine to convert Wind Energy into Electrical
energy and outputs three phase electrical output. The three-phase electrical
output is connected with a three-phase rectifier which converts electrical
output from AC to DC. The DC output is then further connected to a Charge
controller and Battery. A DC load can be connected at Charge controller output.
The Battery is further connected to a home inverter which provides clean
useable AC electricity.
After Installation a masters training and demonstration session was
conducted by Engineers of Ecosense. During this session, the complete scope,
working and research possibilities of the system was discussed. The faculty
members enjoyed the demo and training session. They along with students work on
the equipment to conduct their research.
