As the city is witnessing rapid growth in solar power production across sections of society, including homes and educational institutions, one of the serious limitations of on-grid solar plant is the inability to generate electricity because of the absence of grid power.
On-grid solar plants that have no batteries and depend on the grid power for conversion of direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC) fail to generate electricity in case of power cuts. The Kripya dual mode micro-inverter is set to change all that whether there is grid power or not.
V.G. Veeraraghavan, Managing Partner, Kripya, said at present photo-voltaic (PV) panels in the solar plant in India are linked to one inverter called string inverter, which converts DC to AC with the help of grid power. But Kripya dual mode micro-inverter is a break through technology, which when installed in each solar panel, would harness electricity without any grid-power backup. As the technology is of dual mode — both on-grid and off-grid — it augments and feeds excess power back to the grid even in case of power cuts, which is not the case in the present technology. In off-grid mode (with batteries), the inverter continues to operate and support the local load but stops feeding the grid, he added.
The micro-inverter also has several advantages, including scaling the capacity of the solar plant by installing the micro-inverter along with the PV panel and maximising the efficiency of the solar panels. Under the string inverter, increasing the capacity of the solar plant is not feasible.
Mr. Veeraraghavan said the company had applied for a patent in India and the U.S. and the technology, which was going through the testing process, would very soon be available in the market. He said the company was in talks with big solar companies in the country to install the technology in their solar plants.
