Following its EV testing lab, Birla Vishwakarma Mahavidyalaya in Anand, Gujarat completed a solar lab in February 2025 to give students practical training in solar photovoltaic and renewable energy systems.
The lab includes solar power generation demo setups, solar trackers, solar cell training kits and solar energy trainers. It also has PWM and MPPT charge controllers, grid-tied inverter demonstrator kits, solar street lighting systems, a solar-wind hybrid power plant model and battery cut-section models.
It complements the EV testing and simulation lab installed at the institute in December 2024. Together the two facilities let students follow energy from generation on a solar module, through battery storage, to use in an electric drivetrain.
Students practise panel installation and wiring, compare PWM and MPPT charge control, study grid-tied inverter operation, analyse tracker performance and energy conversion, and model solar-wind hybrid integration. These skills support roles in solar system design, installation and performance analysis.
The solar trackers show in practice how following the sun's path raises energy yield over a fixed panel, while the grid-tied inverter demonstrator explains how a rooftop system feeds surplus power back to the grid, the arrangement used in rooftop installations across Gujarat.
