Abstract
Small off-grid photovoltaic (PV) pumping irrigation systems with storage tanks are an environmentally friendly, cost effective and efficient way of taking advantage of solar energy to irrigate crops, and they are increasingly being used today. However, finding the optimal design of this type of system is cumbersome since there are many possible designs. In this work, a new heuristic method based on the hybrid approach, which uses search space reduction, is developed and adapted to the optimal design for this type of PV irrigation system. At different stages, the proposed approach iteratively combines a bounding strategy based on the application of engineering rules with the aim of reducing the search space with a genetic algorithm to find the optimal design within this search space. The proposed methodology was applied to minimize the cost of a benchmark case study consisting of a real farm placed in the province of Almería (Spain). The proposed methodology was able to provide a faster and an accurate convergence due to the reduction of the search space. This fact led to a reduced total cost of the system. This study proved that the most sensitive variables were the number of modules and the type of pump, whereas the diameter of the pipe and volume of the storage tank remained more stable.
Highlights
The use of renewable energy, such as solar energy, is a suitable measure for coping with the scarcity of fossil fuels and their as sociated problems, such as the emission of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) and their growing impact on global warming and climate change
Regarding the capacity of the storage tank, the volume was discretized in 30 steps of 400 m3, which represents the volume required to supply the irrigation amount of one day of operation during the peak period
A new heuristic method based on a hybrid approach and a search space reduction has been developed and adapted to the optimal design of stand-alone PV irrigation pumping to a storage tank
Summary
The use of renewable energy, such as solar energy, is a suitable measure for coping with the scarcity of fossil fuels and their as sociated problems, such as the emission of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) and their growing impact on global warming and climate change. The first type of PV irrigation system mentioned is the most common because the bias between the energy supply and demand can be balanced by storing water in an elevated storage tank or reservoir [11] Despite their advantages, these systems feature some drawbacks, such as the reservoir investment costs and higher evaporation losses from the reservoir [12]. Mérida et al [27] proposed a multiobjective approach and developed a model called MOPISS that used a Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) for the optimal sizing of a PV irrigation system. Despite their valuable advantages, the accuracy of heuristic methods and their convergence.
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