Design and control of a standalone PV water pumping system

Abstract

Water resources are vital for satisfying human needs. However, almost one-fifth of the world’s population – about 1.2 billion people – live in areas where water is physically rare. One quarter of the global population also live in developing countries that face water shortages. This paper presents standalone PV water pumping system. Photovoltaic (PV) is the main power source, and lead acid batteries are used as energy storage system, to supply a water pump driven by a BLDC motor. The proposed control strategy consists of three control units. The first unit is to control the speed and hysteresis current controller for BLDC motor. The maximum power point tracking (MPPT) is the second control unit, and the battery charging/discharging system is controlled by the third controller. The simulation results show the effectiveness and the good efficiency of the proposed system.

Keywords

• Photovoltaic (PV)
• Brushless direct current (BLDC)
• Perturb and observe (P&O)
• Fuzzy logic controller (FLC)
• Alternative current (AC)
• State of charge (SOC)