Proposing a Hybrid Solar Electrification for Already Existing Hydropower Plant

Solar photovoltaic systems are constantly gaining prominent fame by adding new ways of installing solar panels starting from land to rooftops and now on water bodies. In this paper, the authors have proposed a hybrid system of installing solar panels on the water and dam surface area available with the hydropower plants. For this study, the Khara Hydropower, India plant is selected. The results include various technical, economic as well as ecological parameters. The available area on the Dam surface for installing solar panels is 1580m
²
. Surface-mounted solar panels of 314kWp capacity can be installed on the Dam surface. A similar size Floating solar photovoltaic system with hydro is also studied and the results are compared. HomerPro software results show that the proposed hybrid system is better than the already existing Hydropower plant. The proposed hybrid system has an LCOE value of ₹ 1.98. It will give the payback period of 5.67 years earlier than the base system. The system will capture 15710.5 tons/kWh CO
2
, 68.11 tons/kWh SO
2
, and 33.3 tons/kWh oxides of Nitrogen throughout its lifetime. Land saving of 3200 m
²
is achieved as compared to a similar size of the ground-mounted photovoltaic system. Various performance parameters of the solar plant like performance ratio, solar yield, array capture loss, etc., are also computed.