Efficient Two-Phase Induction Motor Driven Water Pumping System Using Modified V/F Control

Abstract

In recent years, the utilization of a solar energy source has increased impressively, especially in solar water pumping applications. A single-phase induction motor (SPIM) plays an essential role in such systems. Construction simplicity, high reliable operation, low cost, and low maintenance are the main advantages of the SPIM. Nevertheless, for variable speed drives the SPIM has an inherent problem of low efficiency at low speeds. In order to improve the performance of the SPIM driven water pumping system, a modified two-phase induction motor (TPIM) from an existing SPIM driven by a three-leg voltage source inverter (VSI) is introduced. This paper aims to propose a modified V/F speed control method for improving performances of the TPIM driven water pumping system. The proposed system is supplied with two-phase orthogonal voltages generated by the three-leg VSI based on a carrier-based space vector pulse width modulation strategy (CBSVPWM). The performances of the proposed driven water pumping system are investigated under various conditions for two types of CBSVPWM, namely balanced and unbalanced two-phase voltages. The obtained results are also compared with the ones for a conventional water pumping system. The experimental results verify the validity of the proposed pump system.