Maximum power point tracker (MPPT) based photovoltaic (PV) water pumping system using AC and DC motors

Master's Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Engineering - Power Engineering, , course: Optical Engineering, language: English, abstract: With the increased use of photovoltaic (PV) water pumping system, the photovoltaic (PV) has become one of the most promising technology in solar energy applications. Moreover, PV water pumping system is getting more popular in recent days especially in remote areas to supply water where electricity is economically not available. The present study deals with the simulation of Photovoltaic (PV) based AC motor pumping system and DC motor pumping system equipped with Maximum Power Point Tracker (MPPT) and without MPPT. We performed comparative tests of the two well-known MPPT 'the Perturbation and observation' (P&O) and the 'Incremental Conductance' (IncCond) algorithms using actual irradiance data for different climate conditions, and also explained of various MPPT algorithms and the modeling of PV module is discussed in this thesis.The PV pumping system with DC motor-pump load is simulated and described, whose study is carried out by using SimPowerSystem in MATLAB/SIMULINK and the model is then transfer into MATLAB. The whole system is implemented in MATLAB simulation, and verifies the functionality and benefits of MPPT. Simulations also established comparisons between both systems in terms of performance parameters such as total energy produced and total volume of water pumped a day. The results indicate that the system with MPPT can significantly improve the performance and the efficiency of PV water pumping system as compared to the one without MPPT. The PV pumping system with an inverter fed AC induction motor is studied and simulations are carried out by using MATLAB to verify the functional performance and advantages of MPPT, and the detailed comparison between direct coupled systems and systems with MPPT is also included. The result validates that the pumping system with MPPT has much better performance compared to the system without MPPT.The comparative tests of the two MPPT methods, Perturbation and observation (P&O) and Incremental Conductance (IncCond), are done by MATLAB to the achieve maximum power transfer. The results validate that under cloudy weather conditions, the performance of the IncCond algorithm exhibits slightly higher efficiency than performance of the P&O algorithm. The simulations of the PV system with resistive load with MPPT vs. direct are coupled also carried out. The results show that the system with MPPT can utilize more than (96%) of electric energy produced from PVG (PV generator) and, on the other hand the system wit