Single Stage Autonomous Solar Water Pumping System Using PMSM Drive

This article presents a single stage standalone solar photovoltaic (SPV) array fed water pumping system using a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). The vital contribution of this work includes: 1) development of the novel modified vector control, which improves the torque response of the system, 2) development of a novel single stage variable step size incremental conductance technique, which provides a fast maximum power point tracking and eliminates the need of intermediate stage dc-dc converter, and 3) introduction of SPV power feed-forward term, which accelerates the overall response of the system under dynamic conditions. This system includes a SPV array, a three-phase voltage source inverter (VSI), a PMSM and a pump. The SPV array converts solar energy into electrical energy. The VSI acts as power processing unit, which supplies desired currents to drive the PMSM. As the PMSM rotates, the pump coupled to the motor accomplishes the objective of water pumping. This system is modeled and simulated using MATLAB/Simulink with available simpower system toolbox and the behavior of the system under varying atmospheric conditions are validated experimentally on a developed prototype in the laboratory.