Inverterless Solar- DC System Design for Off-
Grid and Near Off-Grid Indian Homes
1
Anusha Ramachandran, 2Sairam Mannar, 3Ashok Jhunjhunwala
Electrical Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai India,
1
anusha@tenet.res.in; 2sairam@tcoe.iitm.ac.in; 3ashok@tenet.res.in
Abstract This paper presents an innovative approach to
tackle the crisis of electrification of off grid and near off grid
homes by using the innovative Inverterless Solar DC
system. Improved efficiency, lower cost and robust design
makes it a very attractive solution. Inverterless system is not
only cost effective to power off grid homes but as and when
grid becomes available, it can be seamlessly integrated. For
homes which are connected to the grid but face load
shedding, this system provides uninterrupted power. This
paper presents the technical design details of this system
KeywordsNear off grid homes; off grid homes; solar-DC; solar
power; efficiency; remote monitoring
I. INTRODUCTION
There are over 300 million people in India that are yet to have
access to quality electricity [2]. Primarily due to the fact that it
is not economical to provide grid connectivity to many of these
homes due to the lack of affordability on the consumer side and
the huge expenditure needed to reach the last mile, burdening
the DISCOM. A decentralized mechanism is needed to generate
the required power at affordable costs. Prices of solar PV have
been coming down rapidly, the flexibility in deploying with
varying power levels from few watts to several megawatts and
the fact that India receives almost 300 days of sun make it an
ideal renewable source.
For rural India decentralized rooftop solar would be an ideal
fit. Typical rooftop solar systems deployed are of few kilowatts,
primarily to augment a stable grid. But the rural homes in India
would need only a few hundred watts of power. At these power
levels with Solar and battery being DC, supporting traditional
AC loads would be highly inefficient with losses up to 45%.
Furthermore, the instability of the grid adds to the complexity
of the system, making them not only inefficient but also
expensive. Therefore, a different solution is needed to enable
these large scale Solar deployments. This paper talks about one
such solution.
II. MOTIVATION FOR INVERTERLESS SOLAR DC
A typical Indian homes minimum requirement to meet their
electricity needs is a couple of fans, lights and a mobile
charging point which together will typically consume 250W. In
order to cater to this load through a conventional solar AC
system, one would require a 500W solar
panel and a 4kWh battery. 978-1-5090-3498-7/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE
A comparative study of various solar systems which are
available in the market was done [3]. It was found that they
were highly inefficient in converting solar power available to
power the home loads. One of the reasons for such high
inefficiency was the fact that they were poorly designed and in
order to overcome this poor design, these systems backed up
power using lead acid batteries which were oversized and
expensive though the loads were very low. These systems were
unreliable and did not function under various test cases. It was
observed that most of these systems employed power
converters which were extremely inefficient. A comparative
end end efficiency figure of many of such systems is as given
below. In this, system A and system B are completely DC
system, system C is a AC system.
From Table 1, it is very clear that more than half of the power
available at the source is lost before it even reaches the load
which results in poor system experience for the end user and
also becomes expensive.
Therefore, a need to design a system which is highly efficient
and is correctly designed keeping in mind various technical
factors and is not very expensive arose. This system should also
leverage on the fact that all electronics and LED lighting is
inherently DC and with the advent of BLDC fans that run on
DC, the power requirement drops to 100W for a typical home,
if run directly on DC [1].
Fig 1 shows the block diagram of the Inverterless Solar DC
controller developed at IITM which provides a decentralized
DC micro grid solution which generates DC power and drives
DC loads bringing down the solar panel and battery sizing to a
third.
TABLE 1: END-END EFFIECIENY OF SYSTEMS UNDER TEST
S.No System Name Efficiency
1 System A 49.57% - 68.79%
2 System B 28.91%
3 System C 19.72%-31.36%
 Load Normal line
Battery
+ charger
Management
Emergency line

Battery
Protection

Battery

Fig 1: Inverterless System Block Diagram

III. INVERTERLESS SYSTEM DESIGN For example, of our design is 0.85 , typical is 3V,
A. Source Management Is assumed to be 0.7V and is 48V. The will be
This system combines solar PV, battery and grid (in DC form) 97.6%.
in a highly efficient manner and delivers power to the load. It
does so by operating both the source voltages and load voltages The value of required is determined by the MPPT algorithm
at almost the same voltage. In order to efficiently charge the which is accordingly implemented by the control circuitry. A
battery as well as cater to loads an innovative mechanism is priority algorithm ensures maximum power is drawn from solar
implemented by means of a delta adder circuit which can followed by battery and is lastly augmented by grid whenever
maintain the required difference between input and output. it is available. It also ensures that during the day maximum
This enables the system to have lower losses as power solar power is utilized, in order to do so, battery is discharged
conversion is required only for the additional voltage which is from time to time when solar is not available. This
added thereby eliminating losses incurred in conventional reduces the dependency on grid and thereby reducing costs for
power conversion. Refer (1) the user. Health of the battery and improved longevity is an
important factor to be considered when designing such systems
=1 1 + (1) as they involve huge costs. In order to ensure that battery life is
Where, extended, Inverterless solar DC system ensures a charging
is the efficiency of the charger mechanism as per recommended standards. As there is a
is the efficiency of the delta adder circuit limitation that loads can handle voltages only in the range 46V-
is the input voltage to the battery charger circuit 52V DC, we follow a 2 step charging mechanism in order to
meet the charging requirements of the battery. One is an inline
is the value of the additional voltage required
charging mechanism where in loads and battery are connected
is the diode drop inline and available input power either from solar or grid is used
for powering the loads as well as charging the battery. It is also
a recommended practice for extending battery life that once in
a while, the battery is charged fully up to 56V. In order to do
Input Output so, we switch the loads directly onto the available source and
Delta Adder + allow the battery to charge fully. The conditions under which
Circuit this is done is determined by software.
Inline charging of battery is done until the State of Charge
(SoC) is 80% beyond which loads are directly tied to sources
and battery is fully charged.
Control Signal

Fig 2: Battery Charger block diagram


Fig3: Battery Charging State Machine
B. Load Management
Inverterless system employs intelligent load management
system which ensures that the battery does not discharge
beyond a certain limit. This ensures a proper charge discharge
cycle for the battery which helps in extending the battery life.
Load line is divided into Normal and Emergency respectively.
This is done so to ensure that some lighting or mobile charging
point is available for a longer duration compared to the other
loads. Typically, the load on the emergency line is a bulb.
Additionally, the load states are divided into low state and
emergency state for indicating that the battery is getting
discharged. Indications are given through buzzer beeps and by
using LED indications. Depending on the state of charge of the
batter transition between the states is made.
NORMAL
Both Emergency and
Normal line ON
SoC <55 %
LOW
SoC > 65 % Both Emergency and Normal On,
warning indications are given
SoC <40 %
EMERGENCY
Only emergency line is
on
Both the normal line and the emergency line operate when the
SoC of the battery is greater than 65%. When the SoC of the
battery falls below 40% the normal line gets cut off allowing
the emergency line to operate until the SoC of the battery goes
below 30%. Beyond this, the battery is not allowed to
discharge and thereby the emergency line is also cut off. As
and when the battery charges the load lines will turn back on.
Also, based on user feedback where it was suggested that the
Inverterless system support an old AC appliance which the
user does not which to change to DC. Inverterless system
provides an inverter output with power limited to 125W which
is enabled only when the grid fails. If grid is available, the AC
appliance under consideration is directly powered through it
and the inverter in the Inverterless system is bypassed.
C. Efficiency Details
Based on the source and load management mechanisms
discussed before, we have achieved the following efficiency
figures for the Inverterless Solar DC system. Solar to battery is
through the delta adder as shown in source management
section is very high. There is almost a direct path from solar to
load likewise for the battery to load. The grid is converted to
DC with a highly efficient AC-DC converter. This also has a
direct path to load and through the delta adder to the battery.
Table 2, summarizes the efficiency numbers achieved by this
system in various paths.
D. Modularity of Inverterless System
Inverterless system has been designed as a scalable solution by
allowing solar and battery capacity to be added incrementally
and modularly as and when the users want. Solar capacity can
be increased from 125W- 500W, battery capacity can be
increased from 1kWh-5kWh.This system also supports
incremental addition of grid capacity of 150W or 500W as and
when it becomes available. Each Inverterless system can be
used to support 4 individual homes. Every home is connected
through a Inverterless Remote Unit (IRU) and is independently
metered. Each of the 4 homes which can be connected will
continue to have a normal line and an emergency line. Each of
these homes is monitored and load is controlled by the
Inverterless system.
All communication between IRU and Inverterless is done on
the power line using DTMF. This eliminates the need of laying
communication cable between the Inverterless system and rest
of the homes which are powered through it.
TABLE 2: EFFICIENCY DETAILS
Path Efficiency
Solar to Battery 95%

SoC > 40 % SoC <30 % Solar to Load 97%

Grid to Battery 89%
CUT OFF Grid to Load 92%
Battery to Load 97%

Fig 4 : Load management state machine

 damage to the system. To avoid these MOSFETs as diodes are
used on the source direct path and output of the delta adder
circuit. This ensures that source to battery path the MOSFETs
introduce negligible loss while blocking the reverse path.
F. System Monitoring and Management
Most of the off grid and near off grid homes in India are located
amidst difficult terrains. These places are remotely located and
not easily accessible for people to go and undertake
maintenance. Hence in order to understand if the system is
behaving correctly or not, details of over usage, under usage,
tampering become important.
Fig 5: Inverterless for 4 home modularity block diagram
Inverterless system continuously monitors solar power, grid
power, power going into the battery and power discharging out
E. Protection features of the battery, the power consumption on the load lines and SoC
It is often seen that the systems installed in rural areas and of the battery. This data is locally stored on the system which
amidst difficult terrains are left unattended after installation. It can be accessed once every month by a person who goes around
is difficult to maintain these systems and if they become faulty, for billing purpose.
these systems cannot be corrected as it remains unknown and
This data can then be sent to the cloud which can be extremely
therefore the problem of un electrification in off grid and near
useful for the system user as well as the designer, for this
off grid homes remains. This motivated us to design a system
purpose, Inverterless system is designed with a BLE interface
which is not only highly efficient but is also rugged and requires
which is cost effective as providing a GSM module for every
minimal maintenance.
system will be expensive. This enables the system to talk to any
Wrong wiring during installation is one of the major issues in external device like a mobile phone / tablet which can support
field. To prevent failure of the system due to such errors and BLE which in turn can connect to cloud as and when data
also against any failures due to loads going bad, various connection is available. This monitoring of data enables the
protections have been built in. The system has protection user or system designer to understand the health of the system
against battery polarity reversal, a simple fuse and diode are and also system behavior under field conditions which might
used for this protection. For protection against load failures or not have been tested in lab environment.
wrong load wiring, we have built a short circuit cum over
Fig 6, shows data from one such system installed in the field.
current protection and recovery mechanism. The circuit
Based on the data available from the installed systems in the
continuously monitors for over current. If the current exceeds
field, modifications to existing algorithms were done which has
the limit the loads are automatically turned off. This circuit improved the system behavior under different conditions. Also,
detects and reacts in few micro seconds as otherwise the system most of the decisions in the algorithm are taken based on certain
can get damaged. The loads are again turned on after few values which can be change from place to place where the
seconds. If the short circuit or over current persists then the system is deployed and can impact its behavior. Hence, this
system not only cuts off the load but it enters a short circuit BLE interface enables the system provider to set the system
mode. This ensures that only after the line fault is attended can parameters accordingly using the mobile app.
the system be restored. The restoration is done by simply keying
a safety code using the keypad on the system.
Typical in DC systems and loads are the presence of bulk
capacitors for filtering. These capacitors provide necessary
buffer against transient changes in addition to the filtering. But
unfortunately they also cause a severe problem of in-rush as
they can draw huge currents when a dc power is first applied to
them. This in turn can cause the elements in the source path to
get damaged. To prevent such problems on source side, the
system has incorporated an inrush mechanism comprising of an
NTC that limits the current early on when power is first applied
and then is bypassed by relay in order to reduce losses due to
NTC.A similar problem exists on load side and to avoid that a
similar setup using NTC and MOSFET based inrush limiter
circuit is implemented. MOSFET bypasses the NTC post the
initial inrush limiting. As the battery charger implements a delta Fig 6: Remote monitoring graph
adder circuit adding to source. There are chances that the
battery voltage can create a positive loopback causing severe
 IV. CONCLUSION
The Inverterless solution through its efficient implementation
of solar DC has enabled a powerful mechanism providing
electricity to all homes in India, literally removing the need for
grid connectivity at much lower costs. Starting with pilots in
Kundithal, village in hilly regions of South India, where
clustering was implemented and in Irrakkam, an island off the
mainland on Bay of Bengal to deploying close to 5000 systems
in almost inaccessible desert regions of Rajasthan, has
demonstrated the value and power of the system.
V. REFERENCES
[1]. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Prabjhot Kaur, Aditya Lolla Solar-DC
Microgrid for Indian Homes: Transforming Power Scenario, IEEE
Electrification Magazine, Vol 4, Issue 2, pp: 10-19. June 2016

[2]. CEEW, Access to clean cooking energy and electricity: Survey of

States, Council on Energy Environment and Water, New Delhi,
2015

[3]. Centre for Decentralized Power Systems Technological

comparative study of solar home lighting systems.

[4]. Prabjhot Kaur, Sudeep Jain, Ashok Jhunjhunwala Solar- DC

Deployment Experience in Off-Grid and Near Off- Grid Homes:
Economics, Technology and Policy Analysis IEEE First
International conference on DC Microgrids , June, 2015