Grid-Integrated Solar PV Fed SRM Water Pump Drive for Small-Scale Irrigation and Household Supply

This paper contributes for the development of a medium-power solar water pump drive for a small-scale irrigation and residential energy supply, integrating the sources PV (Photovoltaic) array and the grid with SR (Switched Reluctance) motor-pump and a set of consumer loads, to establish communication ensuring efficient and reliable operation. This drive system has two converters one is a midpoint converter for control of switched reluctance motor (SRM) and the other being a simple H-bridge inverter for the single-phase grid-connection. In this system, MPP (Maximum Power Point) algorithm to extract the maximum power from the PV array, is an integrated part of the grid-side inverter control. An improved linear sinusoidal tracer (ILST) algorithm is used to extract the fundamental component of the load current connected at PCC. This algorithm is previously used for active filtering operation. Hence, it has inherent advantages like power factor correction (PFC), harmonics elimination, good stability and dynamic response. Simulation of the drive is performed in MATLAB/Simulink environment and verified experimentally by developing a prototype in the laboratory. The system reliability is tested at various abnormalities by introducing both source-side and load-side disturbances and test results are presented.