Solar Radiation Effect on Solar Powered Pump Performance of an Automatic Sprinkler System

The depletion of conventional energy leads to a quest for alternative renewable energy abundant in Indonesia. Solar-powered equipment is sufficient in South Sumatra, which is blessed with high irradiance all year long. This paper presents the application of solar energy in generating electricity to power an automatic sprinkler system. Two 100 Wp solar panels are installed to harvest solar irradiance. The high solar irradiance leads to more increased water flow pumped by the solar power pump, in which the highest irradiance received by the PV panels was 1636.7 W/m2. The minimum irradiance needed by the solar-powered pump to operate is 500 W/m2. The experiment was conducted for 30 days to show the PV panel performance, where the highest power produced by 2 PV panels was 148W, and the maximum water pumped was 0.0113 m3. The experiment shows that the solar irradiance in Tanjung Enim is sufficient to power an automatic sprinkler system.