Solar PV-battery based hybrid water pumping system using BLDC motor drive

This paper deals with a brushless DC (BLDC) motor driven water pump powered by a solar photovoltaic (SPV) array and a battery storage. The SPV-battery based hybrid generation is used as a power source in order to achieve a continuous full volume water delivery regardless of the climate condition. The SPV array is used as a primary source while the battery as a backup. Therefore; the battery is discharged only under bad climate condition or at night when the PV array is insufficient to feed the water pump. Additionally; it is charged by the SPV array when the water delivery is not required. Thus; no external supply is used for the battery charging. A bidirectional charging control enables to switch the mode of operation of the battery automatically through a buck-boost DC-DC converter. The BLDC motor is consistently operated at its rated speed and load. No current sensing is required for the speed control and the power devices of voltage source inverter (VSI) are switched at fundamental frequency. The various performance analysis of the proposed water pumping are carried out in MATLAB/ SIMULINK platform.