Single-Stage Stand-Alone Induction Motor Driven Solar Water Pumping System with Minimal Sensors

Water pumps are essential to extract ground water for agricultural purpose and majority of these pumps are driven by electric motors. However, in remote places due to power scarcity, people rely upon diesel-powered pumps. Solar-powered water pumping has gained attention in the recent years because of increased awareness about global warming, caused by the greenhouse gases released by the fossil fuel-based systems and encouraging government policies to reduce carbon footprint. Efforts are made to develop a cost effective and high performance solar water pump drives. A single-stage induction motor driven photovoltaic water pumping system with minimal sensors is presented in this paper. Proposed system consists of PV array, power inverter stage and scalar (V/f) controlled induction motor (IM) to drive water pump. In the proposed system, PV array stage is connected to the DC bus of power inverter stage eliminating intermediate DC-DC converter stage to reduce overall cost and size. Optimal utilization of the PV system is assured with the help of variable step size-incremental conductance (VSS-INC) maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm. Elimination of feedback signals in scalar control approach reduces the sensor count. The proposed system has been modeled and simulated using MATLAB/Simulink tool. System performance and effectiveness under atmospheric parameter fluctuations are simulated in detail.