Engineers at India’s Techno India Salt Lake are looking for a way for buildings to gain energy independence by creating solar-plus-storage systems. This would have solar panels that can store their energy by being connected to lithium-ion batteries that could be enough to power a commercial building. These batteries would be used to provide LED lighting to buildings. The research institute’s goal is to reduce the cost of electricity costs.

“The scope of the work is to design an effective solar photovoltaic system which would meet the complete energy demand of a proposed business complex without consuming conventional energy supply,” they said.

Having a commercial building with standalone power requires a lot of technology to be installed throughout the building and with solar panels. The battery alone would need its own air-conditioned space due to it needing to be kept at a certain temperature to keep it from overheating. The solar panels would have over 6,000 modules and a total capacity of over 900kW. There are multiple steps commercial building owners need to take to have their own independent solar panels that include grid location points, the construction of the grid, ending with monitoring systems.

Click here to read the full article, originally published August 5, 2022 by PV Magazine.