SEPIC-MISO Converter Based PV Water Pumping System- An Improved Performance Under Mismatching Conditions

In this paper, a single-ended primary inductor converter (SEPIC) based multi-input single-output (MISO) converter for photovoltaic (PV) based water pumping (PVWP) system is proposed. The aim of the proposed SEPIC based MISO converter is to maximize the extraction of available PV power and ensure maximum power point tracking even under the mismatching conditions i.e. effect of partial shading, clouding, dust, ageing or surround shading effect (SSE). The main contribution of this work includes enhanced PV energy extraction under mismatching conditions and thus resulting in overall improved performance of PVWP. Further, the proposed system has added advantages of adopting SEPIC topology for MISO converter such as pulsation-free output to the motor-pump system which improves the system life, reduced stress on circuit components, simple gate-circuit, and non-inverting output. In order to investigate the performance of the proposed system, the SEPIC-MISO converter based PVWP system is simulated in MATLAB environment under uniform and mismatched irradiation conditions. Simulation results verify that the application of SEPIC-MISO converter in the PV water pumping system increases the extraction of available PV as compared to conventional centralized converter based PV water pumping system.