Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Vol. 31, No. 3, September 2023, pp. 1578~1588 ISSN: 2502-4752, DOI: 10.11591/ijeecs.v31.i3.pp1578-1588  1578 Journal homepage: http://ijeecs.iaescore.com Predictive source management for low power domestic direct current grids Satish B. Ashwath Narayan, Pasumarthi Usha Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering, Bangalore, India Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Oct 12, 2022 Revised May 3, 2023 Accepted May 6, 2023 The decrease in the price of solar photo voltaic (PV) panels has led to the widespread adoption of the solar power as a renewable energy source, not only at the grid level but also on the roof tops of the residential buildings. The solar PV panels produce direct current (DC) and can be readily used to drive DC powered loads or charge batteries. Direct powering of the loads from the solar panels is hindered by the highly variant nature of solar power generation which depends on a number of external as well as internal factors. The paper proposes a prediction based direct connection between PV panel and DC loads, only when the panel will be able to supply the required power to the load. The loads have been categorized based on how they need to be powered and their priority levels. The data specific to the rooftop was collected over two years using which the prediction of the panel output was carried out. Combining the load categorization and the power prediction a smart management system was designed which was able to decide on how the loads need to be powered and hence were connected to the appropriate source. Keywords: DC grid Domestic loads Low power Predictive scheduling Smart gird This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Satish B. Ashwath Narayan Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering Bangalore, India Email: satish.eee@dayanandasagr.edu 1. INTRODUCTION The demand for adoption of renewable energy sources have been constantly rising. Solar and wind are most widely adopted renewable energy sources across the globe. The cost of solar panels was one of the biggest hindrances in widespread adoption of solar panels around a decade back, but with the rise in demand and the increased production, the cost of power generation from solar panels has seen a decrease by 81% in the past decade [1]. One of the biggest advantages of the photo voltaic (PV) panels is that the generation of power using panels need not always be done at a remote location as is the case with the traditional fossil fuel-based generation. The PV panels can be installed on the rooftops of buildings and the power can be generated from the same. Many governments across globe have been providing incentives to end users, to encourage the use of roof top solar generation, for example government of India has been encouraging the installation of solar PV on roof tops with schemes introduced in banks to provide loans of up to Rs 10 Lakh to individual households. The National Solar Mission, India, has a target of achieving 40 MW of rooftop PV generation by the end of 2022 [2]. The power generated from the rooftop solar panels can be fed to the grid, such systems are called grid connected systems as depicted in the Figure 1. These systems have been studied widely for their benefits, challenges and drawbacks in various locations [3]–[7]. A 50 KW rooftop grid tied system was studied in [8] and the number of years it takes for such a PV system to return the amount invested upon it was derived. The authors note that without considerable government subsidy installation of rooftop PV for resedential users