BLDC motor driven water pump fed by solar photovoltaic array using boost converter

Abstract

This paper deals with the development of a simple, cost-effective, efficient, reliable and eco-friendly water pumping system utilizing a DC-DC boost converter as an intermediate power conditioning unit in solar photovoltaic (SPV) array fed brushless DC (BLDC) motor driven water pump. The power optimization of SPV array and limiting starting inrush current of the BLDC motor are two major functions of the boost converter. The starting inrush current is bounded without any additional circuitry or control. The boost converter, over the various prevalent DC-DC converters, offers many privileges in SPV array based applications. The voltage source inverter (VSI) is used to perform electronic commutation of the BLDC motor which is operated with the pulses of fundamental frequency, avoiding switching losses caused by the high frequency switching pulses. Furthermore, the speed of BLDC motor is controlled through the variable DC link voltage resulting in the absolute elimination of sensors required for speed control. The proposed water pumping system is modeled, designed and simulated in MATLAB/Simulink and its various performances indices are analyzed, under the practical operating conditions, which manifests its suitability for water pumping.