Design of Low Cost and Efficient Photovoltaic Pumping System Utilizing Synchronous Reluctance Motor

The efficiency and cost of a photovoltaic (PV) pumping system are becoming a topic of great interest, because it has a large applicability in the developing countries. This paper proposes an efficient and low cost PV pumping system employing a synchronous reluctance motor (SynRM). The proposed system doesn't have a DC-DC converter that is often used to maximize the PV output power, nor has it storage (battery). Instead, the system is controlled in such a way that both the PV output power is maximized and the SynRM works at the maximum power per ampere, using a conventional three phase pulse width modulated inverter. Elimination of the battery and the DC-DC converter results in a reduction in the total cost and an increase in the efficiency of the system. Some laboratory measurements are done on a prototype SynRM to validate the FEM simulations.