India’s IIT Madras, bagged the 2017 IEEE Spectrum Technology in the Service of Society Award for “having the most promising potential to provide the greatest overall benefit to humankind.”
IEE’s website mentioned that micro grids designed at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras can serve as the sole source of electricity to homes not connected to the grid. And they can serve as a backup power supply to homes connected to it, to let lighting and essential appliances continue operating even during brownouts. In India, micro grids are expected to evolve rapidly.
The Economic Times reports that the table-sized rooftop plant is a Solar-DC Inverterless system that is cost and energy-efficient. The system is fully equipped with DC wiring, and does not convert direct current produced by a solar installation into alternate current, since each time a unit of AC is converted into DC, there is a 15 percent loss of energy. A DC system is 2.5 times more efficient than the AC system and hence requires lesser space, said IIT-M professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala. The professor added that the solar-DC microgrid will help break the logjam that the domestic power supply currently faces in India.
