Resource detail

India is running one of the largest SPV programme among the developing countries. Storage batteries are being the most critical component of any SPV system in view of cyclic availability of the sun in 24h domain and the intermittent nature of available radiation. Since there is no systematic study on various aspects of selection and performance of lead-acid and other storage batteries for PV applications in the literature CSIR-Central Electrochemical Research Institute and MNRE-Solar Energy Centre submitted an Research and Development Technology project namely “Design and Development of Batteries for SPV Applications” to Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. The broad objective of the project is to optimize the battery performance in various PV applications by way of developing suitable lead-acid batteries and their charging mechanism. The report covers the following aspects: Failure analysis of the used batteries in the existing solar PV applications, Design and Development of suitable lead-acid batteries for SPV applications, Development of test protocols for batteries SPV application, Exploring battery chemistries other than lead-acid battery, Studying of existing circuit designs for charge controllers and optimizing their performance, Dissemination of information thus generated through workshop and conferences.