Optimised Design and Analysis of Solar Water Pumping Systems for Pakistani Conditions

This paper is about the optimized design and analysis of two solar water pumping systems in which one of the systems is designed with a battery bank and other with a cylindrical water tank for a selected site in Pakistan. The design, sizing, cost analysis and steady state analysis of the proposed systems were done in HOMER and dynamic analysis of the designed system with battery bank was performed in MATLAB/Simulink. The simulations performed in HOMER involved proper mapping of the loads which helped to evaluate the PV panel requirement, inverter rating, batteries (in case of battery based solution), modeling of water tank as a deferrable load (in case of solution based of water tank) and detailed cost analysis for a life time of 25 years. To verify the design of the solar water pumping system with battery bank, a simulation in MATLAB/Simulink for study of dynamic behavior of the overall system was performed which involved mathematical modeling of a PV panel, buckboost converter, inverter, battery bank and motor/pump, a perturb and observe maximum power point tracking algorithm based control system. Analysis was conducted based on the economic results that indicate designed solar water pumping system with water tank would be a cheaper solution as compared to solar water pumping system with a battery bank. This work can be taken as a case study for the understanding and optimized designs of solar water pumping system with battery bank and with cylindrical tank in Pakistani conditions.