Design and Development of Self-Assisted Switched Reluctance Motor Driven Solar Water Pump

An investigation on the performance of a dual output buck-boost converter is presented in this paper to verify its suitability for solar water pump driven by switched reluctance motor (SRM) drive. Conventional buck-boost converter is modified for a dual-output configuration to feed the capacitors as per the requirement of split-dc link SRM converter. This modification with two inductors in its output section, provides two independent balanced DC output voltages from a single dc source featuring single power semiconductor switch. Inherent voltage balancing feature, eliminates the need of extra control architecture to balance the voltages across the DC link capacitors, thereby reducing the cost and complexity of the system. A simple and efficient maximum power point tracking (MPPT) technique called incremental conductance (InC) is used to drive the photovoltaic (PV) array at maximum power point (MPP) with oscillation free operation and to increase the system efficiency. A proper selection in step size of MPPT, provides smooth starting of SRM drive. The performance of the system is validated both by simulation in MATLAB/Simulink and by experimentally on a developed prototype using a 8/6 SRM. The response of the system obtained under starting, steady state and dynamic conditions, shows its aptness towards water pumping system powered by solar PV array.