Abstract
Solar photovoltaic powered water pumping systems are becoming very successful in regions where there is no opportunity for connecting the grid. The photovoltaic technology converts solar energy into electrical energy for operating DC or AC motor-based water pump. In the case of a solar AC motor water pump, it engages two energy conversion stages (DC-DC and DC-AC) in the power conditioning unit. This usually resulted in increased size, cost, complexity and decreases efficiency of the entire system. In addition, the existing two-level inverter (DC-AC) stage generates higher harmonics in output voltage that deteriorates AC motor performance. As a consequence, a single energy conversion stage with more than two-level output voltage could be possible by utilizing multilevel inverters which replaces two-level inversion stage easily to get higher levels of output voltages as well for extracting best results from the motor. Moreover, they can able to operate with reduced switching frequency that certainly reduces switching losses. Still, the increased voltage levels comprise a higher number of power semiconductor switches, cumulative voltage stress and switching losses are making the system more complicated. In this paper an innovative seven-level inverter with five switches had been taken to investigate 0.5 H. P single phase induction motor water pump. This topology ensures minimum switching losses, lowering size along with less installation cost. In order to provide better insight into the working and performance of this proposed topology the simulation results performed in the MATLAB / Simulink environment and hardware implementation are depicted.
Highlights
Solar photovoltaic-powered water pumping systems (SPVWP) are progressively used in the areas where there is plentiful sunshine and scarce power generation systems
Simulations conducted with MATLAB/Simulink environment to verify and confirm whether the proposed multilevel inverter topology can be practically suitable to solar photovoltaicpowered water pumping system or not
The reduced switch count, lesser requirement of gate driver circuits and direct current (DC) sources, and increased voltage levels in the output are the main features of the proposed multilevel inverter topology
Summary
Solar photovoltaic-powered water pumping systems (SPVWP) are progressively used in the areas where there is plentiful sunshine and scarce power generation systems. The operation of a seven-level inverter with five switches inverter had been tested experimentally with 0.5 HP single-phase induction motor water pump with the help of d-SPACE RTI-1104 platform This topology uses an insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT), as power switches and gate signals are given through a sinusoidal pulse width modulation technique. This proposed system eliminates the need for the DC–DC conversion stage in SPVWP and provides a single-stage solution through the MLI topology. The observed results show that the induction motor pump stayed its operation smoothly by receiving quality output voltage with lesser THD and with reduced switching losses from seven-level fiveswitch topology. The speed and flowrate are regulated at the desired value with the help of pulses obtained from the proposed MLI topology
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