Solar powered water pumping system employing switched reluctance motor drive

Abstract

This paper deals with the simple design method and performance investigation of a solar photovoltaic (SPV) array fed water pumping system employing a switched reluctance motor (SRM) drive coupled to a centrifugal water pump. SRM possessing a number of advantages over the dc and ac motors such as high torque density, low inertia, quick response, low losses because of the absence of permanent magnet or winding on the rotor, wide speed range capability, and simple control, suits for the SPV powered water pumping system. A DC-DC Cuk converter which facilitates the continuous and smooth input/output current and boundless region for maximum power point tracking (MPPT) operation is used as an intermediate DC-DC converter between the SPV array and the mid-point converter, in order to operate the SPV array at its optimum power point. The proposed system, subjected to the dynamically changing atmospheric condition is designed; modeled and simulated using MATLAB/Simulink and the simulation results of SRM are represented to demonstrate its suitability and performance.