A Review of Solar DC Microgrids Design for Smart Farming in a New Zealand Lifestyle Block

This paper presents a review of Solar DC Microgrids design energizing a small farm where irrigation is operated for a commercial cut-flower shade house and realtime animal control units. The irrigation unit has small-size DC Microgrids providing daily water pumping and irrigation under realtime online monitoring and remote control. An image-processing design enables power management to optimize the use of resources. The system irrigates 600 pots of Hydrangeas in a 2000 Square Meters shade house using a 100W solar panel and 20Ah battery. These Solar DC Microgrids are also designed to support animal control units, including water and fencing control. Such Solar DC Microgrids have been operated at low cost for 6 years.