BLDC motor driven solar PV array fed water pumping system employing zeta converter

Abstract

This paper proposes a solar photovoltaic (SPV) array fed water pumping system utilizing a zeta converter as an intermediate DC-DC converter in order to extract the maximum available power from the SPV array. Controlling the zeta converter in an intelligent manner through the incremental conductance maximum power point tracking (INC-MPPT) algorithm offers the soft starting of the brushless DC (BLDC) motor employed to drive a centrifugal water pump coupled to its shaft. Soft starting i.e. the reduced current starting inhibits the harmful effect of the high starting current on the windings of the BLDC motor. A fundamental frequency switching of the voltage source inverter (VSI) is accomplished by the electronic commutation of the BLDC motor, thereby avoiding the VSI losses occurred owing to the high frequency switching. A new design approach for the low valued DC link capacitor of VSI is proposed. The proposed water pumping system is designed and modeled such that the performance is not affected even under the dynamic conditions. Suitability of the proposed system under dynamic conditions is demonstrated by the simulation results using MATLAB/Simulink software.