Switched Capacitor Converter for Solar Powered BLDC Motor Driven Water Pump

Renewable energy sources are increasingly used in many applications due to the depleting nature of the present energy sources as well as the increased pollution caused by them. Out of the renewable energy sources solar Photovoltaic(SPV) is the most promising one due to its availability at most of the places and cleanliness. As the voltage available from PV panel is insufficient to drive the motor pump set, a high gain highly efficient DC-DC converter is essential to boost up the voltage. This paper presents a switched capacitor converter for BLDC Motor driven water pump fed from solar PV. The switched capacitor converter is selected due to its high voltage gain, low device stresses, low input and output current ripple. An incremental conductance maximum power point tracking (INC MPPT) algorithm is incorporated along with the SC converter for extracting maximum solar energy. A brushless DC (BLDC) motor is used to drive a centrifugal pump which provides less maintenance, high efficiency and high reliability. The BLDC motor is controlled by the electronic commutation scheme in which switching pulses to the voltage source inverter(VSI) is produced according to the hall sensor signals. The behavior of proposed system is evaluated through MATLAB/simulink based simulation study. The entire system is analysed at various irradiation conditions. It is found that the system is effective even at low irradiation level as 200 W/ m².