Pre-Feasibilty Study for Solar Photovoltaic System of Residential Non-Teaching Staff Colony in RTU Kota Ronak Sharma Department of Renewable Energy Rajasthan Technical University Kota, India ronaksharma135@gmail.com Lata Gidwani Department of Electrical Engineering Rajasthan Technical University Kota, India gd97@radiffmail.com Abstract— This paper present a prefeasibility study for solar PV system design calculation and potential assessment for residential non-teaching staff colony in the campus of Rajasthan Technical University(RTU), Kota, Rajasthan, India. This study show a 45 kW solar photovoltaic system with three different configuration which is grid connected with 0% backup, grid connected with 30% backup and third one is, off grid system or 100% backup, can generate sufficient amount of electrical power as compare to consumption and mitigate the energy consumption from grid supply as well as reduce the grid dependence. Financial analysis of these systems by assuming some parameters is also done in this study. Keywords—Solar Energy, Solar photovoltaic System, System Design, Potential Assesment, Off-grid, On-grid, Payback Period. I. INTRODUCTION India is continuously promoting renewable energy technologies being it under academic sector or putting it into operation which is run by the Indian ministry for the development of solar campus. Since the Sun is the ultimate source of energy so, the solar energy can be made use of directly by solar photovoltaic technology. Advantage of this energy is that it is free of carbon and greenhouse gases during the time of power production, and thus helps in controlling global warming and climate change to some extent into the atmosphere. Chandel et al. [1] have presented a paper on solar photovoltaic system design and its financial analysis for a particular industrial region in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Also, they have design a solar photovoltaic plant of 2.5 MW capacity according to the demand of 2.21 MW of whole industrial region. They have compared off site and on site plant installation scheme. They have done this comparison on the basis of internal rate of return (IRR), net present value (NPV), simple payback period, discount payback period and levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for both on site and off site plant. Vigneshwari et al. [2] designed a solar photovoltaic system for residential utility with of grid and on grid configuration. This system is able to fulfill the energy demand of 46 kW. As well as, they analyzed economics of these systems, separately. They have calculated net profit for 6 th , 11 th and 16 th year for both system configurations and compare them as well as. By comparing it, they found that off grid system is more beneficial than on grid system. But on the other hand if we talking about rate of return or payback period, the grid connected system is more promising. Singh et al. [3] have presented a study of two grid connected solar photovoltaic system of same location with different technologies. The first one is 58 kW grid connected rooftop PV system and second one is 43 kW with thin film technology. For both system they have done analysis and comparison of performances separately. To compare both system, they have used some performance indicators which are performance ratio, specific yield, reference yield, capture loss, system loss, system efficiency etc. TABLE I ELECTRICAL LOAD, SOLAR RADIATION AND DAYLIGHT HOURS FOR LOCATION Months Electric Load (kWh) Radiation Daylight Hour Jan 4935 4.13 10.7 Feb 4770 4.91 11.3 Mar 4455 5.62 12 Apr 5220 6.23 12.7 May 6555 6.34 13.3 Jun 8550 6.04 13.6 Jul 8235 4.84 13.5 Aug 7292 4.43 13 Sep 10020 5.2 12.3 Oct 2235 4.96 11.6 Nov 7050 4.33 10.9 Dec 4935 3.91 10.6 Total 74252 60.94 145.5 Average 6187.667 5.078333 12.125 gd97@radifmail.com 978-1-4673-9080-4/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE