Design Guide for an Inverter-Based Grid Interactive Solar Pumping System for Domestic Purposes

Book excerpt: Water resources are essential for satisfying human needs, protecting health, and ensuring food production, energy and the restoration of ecosystems, as well as for social and economic development and for sustainable development. Water pumping has a long history; so many methods have been developed to pump water with a minimum of effort. These have been utilized a variety of power sources, namely human energy, animal power, hydro power, wind, solar and fossil fuels for small generators. Renewable energy is energy that is replenished by natural processes at a rate comparable or faster than its rate of consumption by humans. The energy contained in sunlight, called solar energy, can be converted into electricity as well. This energy is converted into electricity directly using devices based on Semiconductor materials, we call it photovoltaic (PV).A benefit of using solar energy to water pump systems is that increased water requirements for human consumptions, livestock and irrigation tend to coincide with the seasonal increase of incoming solar energy. The volume of water pumped by a solar-powered system in a given interval depends on the total amount of solar energy available in that time period. Specifically, the flow rate of the water pumped is determined by both the intensity of the solar energy available and the size of the PV array used to convert that solar energy into electricity. The solar pump can be pump directly into the system operation during daytime, or pump water to a storage tank or reservoir (which is part of the solar pumping solution) so that water is also available on cloudy days and at night. Since it will be with interactive to the grid, in case of water out during night and cloudy days due to high consumptions of water, the system may continue to operate and stored water to storage tank for the availability of water.When properly designed, these PV systems can also result in significant long-term cost savings and a smaller environmental footprint compared to conventional power systems.