Optimum Design and Evaluation of Solar Water Pumping System for Rural Areas

Abstract

Sultanate of Oman like the rest of GCC countries is a fossil-fuel-rich country that highly depends on the production of natural gas which exists in massive amounts of its land, which makes electricity generation through natural gas a cheap solution. However, power transmission to rural areas costs the government massive amounts of money. The need of electricity for rural areas, especially for water pumping systems, is crucial to farmers. One solution is to use diesel generators for water pumping; however this solution is costly over the long run and not environmentally friendly. This paper studies the use of PV-powered water pumping system instead and shows techno-economic and environmental studies comparing both PV and Diesel pumping solutions. The PVWPS showed to be more cost-effective for Oman than the diesel generator over the lifetime of the system and having 0 carbon emissions, making it the obvious choice for such issue. The optimum COE found for the PV-powered pumping system is US$ 0.4743/kWh while the COE for Diesel-powered pumping system is US$ 0.6092/kWh.