An Efficient Solar Powered Induction Motor Drive System

This paper proposes an efficient topology of induction motor drive system using a push-pull converter and a three-phase inverter with the solar array as source of energy for water-pumping application. PV energy is being increasingly employed for this purpose. A push-pull DC-to-DC boost converter has been employed for stepping up the solar array DC voltage. In this paper, to obtain the more efficient topology for the proposed drive system, two methods of PWM techniques, namely sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM) and space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM), for inverter switching are implemented on the system and are compared. Furthermore, Volts/Hertz (V/f) control technique is used to maintain constant flux within the induction motor. Incremental conductance algorithm is used to achieve maximum power point tracking (MPPT) of the PV array at every instant. Finally, simulation of this system is done in MATLAB/SIMULINK in order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed design.