Solar Powered Water Pump Lifting Agriculture

Abstract

Because of the energy crisis in Pakistan farmers are getting serious difficulties in irrigating their crops under such increasing diesel costs. There is a need to facilitate the farmers in alternative ways of powering their water pumps. There are lots of alternative ways, powering water pump, but most economical way is the solar pumping which can bring great outcomes in Farmers of Pakistan whom are facing serious difficulties in irrigating their crops under such severe energy crisis and ever increasing diesel costs. According to one estimate, In Pakistan more than 1Million pumps are in use, out of which 750,000 are diesel driven pumps. If we replace 25% diesel pumps by solar pumps, we can save about 3570 MW of electricity. In this paper 220 W motor is used to operate two days without sunshine or power from the PV panels, 40Wh was required daily as back up, supply a minimum of 880 Wh. Since this is a 12 V system, 880Wh/12V = 73.3 Ah was employed A battery bank should be at least 73.3 Ah, here, since the controller selected had a deep discharge protection at less than 30% of battery capacity, a bank of at least 105 Ah was required. For this project a 105 Ah battery was used as backup and all the simulation is done in the matlab.