Design and performance analysis of a photovoltaic water pumping system based on DC-DC boost converter and BLDC motor

International audienceThis paper presents the modeling, control and optimization of a photovoltaic water pumping system. The DC-DC boost converter is used as a mediator between a Solar Photovoltaic (SPV) array and the Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) to feed the brushless DC (BLDC) motor.A centrifugal pump is connected to this motor in order to use the water pumped afterwards tomultiple applications. Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) control techniques play a vital role in efficiency improvement of photovoltaic (PV) systems. It is mainly used to extract maximum possible power of the PV modules under any condition of solar irradiation. For this reason, P&O algorithm is used due to its high performance and its simplicity of implementation. The boost converter, over the various common DC-DC converters, offers many advantages in SPV based applications, such limiting the starting inrush current of the motors. Using a BLDC motor is found to be the best option because of its high efficiency, supreme reliability, better performance, and requires low maintenance, over a wide range of speeds. The considered model as well as the control strategy has been implemented in MATLAB/Simulink environment. The results show the effectiveness of the studied photovoltaic water pumping system