The Indian demonstration activities involve 3 sites, which include i) a remote village of Barubeda, Ranchi in the state of Jharkhand, ii) Borakhai village, Silchar in the state of Assam and iii) a smart building system at the campus of IIT Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra. In the two villages, the overall goal of the demonstrator is to develop a community-based integrated renewable energy system (RES) enabling smart energy solutions for supplying 24×7 reliable, low-carbon, efficient and quality energy supply for meeting the daily and sustainable needs of the rural population. Around 50 households in the Barubeda village, and 80 households (8 clusters of 10 houses each, 6 clusters with weak grid connection and other two clusters without direct grid supply) of Borakhai village are used for implementing the pilot activities. For the campus smart building along with EV charging infrastructure, the generic aim is to establish a transition towards a carbon neutral system through futuristic smart building and EV system at a specific section of the campus. The specific objectives for the Indian demonstrators include:
- Develop and demonstration of renewable energy powered irrigation scheme in the villages enabling multiple seasonal farming during non-monsoon periods boosting local economy and local job creation;
- Develop and demonstration of the use of solar PV and low-speed wind turbines for water pumping and irrigation schemes, and thus eliminating manual fetching of water by the residents and improving the agriculture productivity. The use of battery storage enables provision of water during low generation periods;
- Develop and demonstration of community based solar PV powered electric-rickshaws and implementation of campus-based EV charging infrastructure for the users;
- Demonstration of biomass/biogas based cooking system for community kitchen and household cooking in the villages. This is aimed for the transition of eliminating the use of firewood and generating positive health impact to the community and reduce the air pollution;
- Develop and demonstrate community cooling, heating and drying system for increasing the productivity and shelf life of agricultural products (vegetables, milk etc.) and for storing medicines (including lifesaving medicines) at community/local pharmacy level;
- Demonstration of solar PV fed bio vegetable and plant waste processing unit for converting plant and vegetable residues to manure;
- Develop and demonstrate smart energy management systems for multicarrier energy systems (power sources like solar PV, wind, biogas, biomass etc.) and flexibility from energy storages and deferrable loads, for reliable energy supply in the two rural households and in the research institute campus building;
- Develop and demonstrate local balancing and distributed control for energy sharing between households, household clusters and in the overall integrated community energy system. Further, the feasibility for interconnecting the micro-energy clusters with the neighboring village is also analysed;
- Demonstrate a futuristic smart building system;
- Demonstration of grid support services including ancillary services, demand response and grid flexibility from the local integrated energy system at the campus;
- Establish energy community cooperative and ownership models for efficient and harmonised operation of the local multi-vector energy islands;