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Spice Village, Thekkady
In late 2011, Spice Village sought the expertise of TS to design and install an off-grid SPV system for their resort.
Upon study of the existing resort facilities and requirements, TS came up with 65Kw SPV plant to meet 100% of the resort’s power needs with biodiesel genset standby if required.
The successful implementation of the project has eliminated the use of DG operation and thus the emission and noise, and did away with the Grid.
It is now totally isolated from the grid and is immune to grid failures and poor quality of the grid.
The project set a payback time of five years for the PV system investment.
The resort became the world’s First Net Zero – Eco Resort.
The Project earned Finalist Nominee in the InterSolar Award for the year 2012. It won the 2nd position in the Award ceremony.
It qualified for subsidy, became eligible to earn carbon credits.
By switching to solar energy solutions provided by TS, the resort made good savings on all counts.
he primary challenge in adopting Solar PV for meeting the total power requirement of the resort was to conduct an energy audit and reduce the electricity consumption to the lowest possible levels, but at the same time not compromising on any of the comforts and facilities offered to the guest. It was also important to conduct energy audit to reduce the power consumption to arrive at an optimize system capacity and make the project financially viable.
A detailed energy audit was conducted to understand inefficiencies in the present system. By analyzing the resort’s existing appliances and electrical consumption, TS was able to improve the resort’s energy efficiency by more than 500%, reducing the per day consumption from 750kWh to 200kWh. The Energy Audit included the analysis of the present Energy usage at different hours in a day, Documentation of each power point, equipment with wattage, Study of all utilities and analyzing the total load during specific hours, Identify & Observe for leakages, wastage, inefficient energy points. It also required TS to train their staff on Best Energy Efficiency practices.
The Solar Module structure also has Gutters line along the Solar modules, to collect and harvest Rain Water, the System helps harvest nearly 4 Million Ltrs of water per year, thus the System not only generates Power from the Sun but also harvests Water, it is for the first time anywhere in the World, such an Innovative design is put into practice.
The Solar Components, like the Solar Modules, Inverters and Battery have been chosen and integrated based on the Climatic Condition of the installation, application and need for reliability.
Due to the high altitude and cloudy condition, Thin Film aSi Solar Modules were use, Highly efficient and reliable SMA Inverter were used.
For such a typical application like Spice Village, the peak load occurs between 1800 to 2200 hrs and thus the reliability and performance of the entire system and even the implementation of PV technology hinges on the performance of Battery Bank.
To meet such requirements, a specialized deep cycle battery bank was designed and manufactured. Thus, Trojan’s industrial line battery used for this project delivers up to 2500 cycles at 50% DOD and has an estimated service life of 15-20 years.
It ensured maximum battery life, withstand the rigorous conditions, extreme temperatures, remote locations and the intermittent nature of solar power generation.
