Control and energy management strategies applied for solar photovoltaic and wind energy fed water pumping system: A review

Abstract

Pumping of water requires excessive energy for its operation by consuming a massive amount of diesel, gasoline, electric power etc. The more promising alternative energies to perform the same operation without any energy cost are solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind. These fastest growing renewable energies are more reliable and well suitable for remote villages where there is no possibility of extending transmission lines. Furthermore, these systems are optimal for conditions like only small amount of water needed to be pumped for a particular time. Unlike conventional energy sources of electric power, the renewable energy sources are not dispatchable its power output cannot be controlled. In that case, it involves power conversion stages so that it would necessitate to design an advanced control strategy technique. Those control strategies greatly avoid and protects the system from detrimental operating conditions by monitoring input voltage, water flow, torque, power, pressure, speed and motor vibration etc. Henceforth the use of efficient control strategy not only increase the performance of system it also helps to increase the number of operational hours of solar PV and wind energy systems. In this manuscript, the research work of various control strategies carried out in solar PV and wind energy-based water pumping systems are presented. Additionally, this paper intends to discuss the energy management strategies applied for renewable energy fed water pumping system when the system assisted with third energy system (battery bank, fuel cell, etc). These benefited systems ensure good design, guarantees the control speed required for the motor, regulates the flow of water, assuring accurate operation for all conversion and finally, it maintains precise balance in between the renewable energy generated and power required by the load (pump).