How Monitoring Improves Decentralized Renewable Energy To Support Healthcare?

By-Rishikesh Mishra and Lanvin Concessao

The availability of reliable electricity increases a healthcare facility’s ability to treat patients and serve the community. Electricity is critical to operate basic equipment such as lights, fans and water pumps, but also run lifesaving equipment like baby warmers, oxygen concentrators, diagnostics, and vaccine freezers and refrigerators.

In regions where grid electricity is either unavailable or unreliable, decentralized renewable energy (DRE) systems can offer an alternative. However, these systems could also breakdown occasionally. They need to be monitored to ensure they are functioning. This photoblog looks at how monitoring can help track and improve DRE systems support in healthcare delivery. We document interventions in some health facilities in remote parts of India to understand challenges and how these can be addressed.

While India achieved near universal electrification at the household level in 2019, health facilities and clinics that need an assured, steady supply of electricity, often face power shortages from a few hours to a few days. This is much more so in remote and rural locations or other areas with unreliable electricity despite proximity to a power grid. Integrating decentralized energy systems (often solar Photo Voltaic systems) in rural health facilities can complement existing energy supply solutions – grid electricity or diesel generators. They can also operate independently, with battery storage.

While thousands of health facilities in India have been solarized, it is important to ensure these energy systems, and those being planned in the future, run smoothly. Here, we dive deeper into one such important aspect, i.e., monitoring and tracking the running of the decentralized energy systems. These insights are drawn from WRI India’s research on the solarizing of 26 healthcare facilities, in collaboration with HSBC India, across 19 districts in the states of Assam, Jharkhand, and Maharashtra that are part of the network of the Catholic Health Association of India (CHAI).

Inverters lie at the heart of any solar energy system. They convert electricity generated by solar panels (direct current or DC) into a form that general appliances can use (alternating current or AC). Additionally, inverters also provide data to monitor and manage the performance of solar energy systems, enabling timely maintenance and troubleshooting to optimize its operation. Health facility staff can assess a system’s functioning by observing an inverter’s readings on energy generation.

However, this has limitations. If an inverter malfunctions or needs to be reset, all the data is likely to be lost, i.e., the solar kWh reading in the photograph would reset to ‘zero’ (0 kWh) and the readings or generation data till date would be lost.

Recognizing that inverter-based readings may not last, several solar PV projects have installed Remote Monitoring Systems (RMS). These are cloud-based platforms, crucial for overseeing solar power plants. They offer real-time status of the system, data visualization, tracking and analysis, enabling easier troubleshooting of an energy system. These offer an additional layer of oversight, ensuring continuous monitoring and data collection even if an inverter failures or malfunctions.

With functions like remote communication, data storage on the cloud, and historical performance data, RMS can help ensure efficient monitoring, predictive maintenance, and timely resolution of glitches in solar energy systems.

While RMS have been instrumental in providing timely status updates remotely, it comes at an additional cost – about 1-3% of the overall project cost. Worse, a number of these have failed due to various reasons, as highlighted in WRI India’s report. These include the lack of reliable network availability, SIM card compatibility with the geographic location and the monitoring system, hardware issues like display of parameters, RMS and Inverter Modbus communication and reliability of internet access.

These challenges can be overcome with inputs and feedback from health facility staff who are best placed to advise on aspects such as network, internet access, SIM usage etc., which are crucial to identify the best RMS for a given site (along with more advanced RMS systems, which can connect even via 2G network). Additionally, it is essential for vendors to discuss the project requirements with the Inverter and RMS manufacturers before purchasing the equipment. Continuous feedback from the vendors on what is working and what is not, at regular intervals, ensures that R&D advances and resolutions are quicker.

Additionally, we recommended integration of digital energy meters in some of the healthcare facilities. These digital energy meters are similar to the ones used to monitor electricity supply in homes connected to the grid.

To ensure that reliable and regular data is received, this additional layer was added. These meters serve as a safeguard by providing accurate energy measurements and reducing inverter resets, RMS communication glitches, and such. They offer benefits such as accuracy, independence from internet network or system malfunction, granularity, and redundancy.

Given that the projects were hybrid, i.e., integrating solar power supply with grid power and battery storage, we tried to ensure the contribution of energy from different sources to meet the demand was accurately captured.

In the photographs above, we can see a DC energy meter (left), which is responsible for capturing the solar energy generation essential to monitoring the efficiency of a renewable energy generation plant.

The AC energy meter (fourth from left) measures the grid input to the inverter, ensuring uninterrupted power supply during periods when solar irradiation is low or unavailable (on overcast days, or evenings) or when battery storage is depleted. AC energy meters (3 and 4 from left) are designed to measure the final energy consumption by loads.

Another AC meter (third from left) provides the overall energy usage in hybrid setups, enabling efficiency measures of overall energy combined from both solar and the grid, and actual usage.

While capturing data regularly adds to the workload of hospital staff, it ensures accurate data on energy generation and consumption, and helps assess whether a system is optimally used or whether it can take any additional load. With better data, we observed that many energy systems were initially underutilized, i.e., only up to 30-50% of the time. Discussing this underutilization with health facility staff helped understand their additional energy needs and areas where energy could be utilized more efficiently. Building staff capacity in energy management, energy efficient appliance integration and system optimization allowed them to use the energy systems effectively and bring down costs.

As global and local carbon markets develop, projects that multi-solve energy and development challenges could become attractive for carbon and/or renewable energy credits. Implementing agencies often work on assumptions around generation data, which is often the only data available, to assess the extent of greenhouse gas (GHG emissions avoided. However, this method tends to overestimate actual GHG emissions avoided. Energy consumption data provides a more accurate measure of a facility’s energy use and emissions avoided and can help monetize “avoided carbon emissions” through Renewable Energy Credits. Offering these credits to end users like health facilities could incentivize investments in energy system operations and maintenance, ensuring a sustainable future for healthcare facilities.

Ultimately, integrating renewable energy solutions at remote locations and complementing these with monitoring systems can vastly improve last mile healthcare service delivery and reduce harmful emissions.

Rishikesh Mishra and Lanvin Concessao are both Program Managers, Energy at WRI India