Techno-economic Feasibility Study on a PV System for Peach Crop Irrigation in Egypt

This paper showed a detailed investigation for a photovoltaic water pumping system and the correlated economic analysis for an irrigation system in Farafra’s new reclaimed lands in Egypt. The objective of this study is to compare different pumping systems using PV energy under the conditions of the Farafra area (northwest of Egypt). Complete modeling and simulation for the whole system were done using MATLAB scripting. This model is designed for the atmospheric conditions of the Farafra area in Egypt, and the water uses regulations of Reef Masr company. Two systems were compared to reach the minimum cost system. the first system is a conventional irrigation Diesel system. In contrast, the second system is a PV irrigation system, including PV modules, inverter, submersible pump, ground precipitation tank, and distributing pump. The PV irrigation system proved to be the optimum economic solution since it gives minimum costs solution. The PV system achieved the cost of ${\$}$0.0004/m3/meter depth from wellhead 50 m depth, compared with ${\$}$0.0011/m3/meter depth for the conventional system based on a Diesel.