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─ Present day India's power scenario is in a precarious situation with power outages for around 2 hours a day in urban areas and 8−10 hours a day in rural areas. Petrol pump stations are one such sector, which is heavily affected due to the significant gap between electricity demand and supply. In most of the cases, diesel generator (DG) set is used as power backup source which decreases profit margins because of higher running cost. Switching to solar hybrid power system with battery backup would free them from adverse effects of load shedding, expensive diesel bills and toxic fumes. However, higher initial investment on solar balance of systems (BOS) like battery, solar panels and associated electronics is not in favor for its wide adoption.In this paper, concept of storage integrated DC grid (SID) along with system design is proposed for a typical petrol pump station. Financial feasibility study is performed for the proposed system with respect to DG set system and conventional solar power system. Economic analysis in terms of total cost of ownership, cumulative savings over years is presented. It is shown that though the initial investment of solar system is high, the total cost of ownership is much less than DG set if considered for period of 3 years or more with significant cumulative savings.

<abstract> <p>India, being a developing country with a fast-growing economy, experiences ever increasing electrical energy demand. Industrial and economic development in rural India is impeded by inadequate, erratic and unreliable grid supply. This has resulted in underperformance of small-scale manufacturing and service industries. Dependency on fossil fuel-based sources as an alternative increases the operation costs and carbon emissions. Migration to cleaner energy ensures sustainable solution and addresses the issues of depleting fossil fuels, global warming and environmental hazards. In this regard, hybrid renewable energy systems have gained wide acceptance as optimum solution. Hence, authors have optimally designed hybrid energy system for power deprived rural Indian villages. Authors have heeded to the vital element of incremental load growth over years while designing the microgrid to sustain the increasing load demand of emerging economy of developing country. HOMER Pro Software is utilized to accomplish system size optimization and authors have gained comprehensive insights into techno-financial feasibility for different dispatch strategies of the proposed energy system. The levelized cost of electricity of the optimal off-grid system catering to multiyear incremental load growth is 0.14$/kWh indicating that proposed system is promising in terms of commercial efficacy. The study performs a detailed analysis of the results obtained during different phases of the project to ensure robustness and supply continuity of the proposed system. The paper also includes comparison of the carbon footprint in the proposed system with that of existing system.</p> </abstract>

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