Utility Grid Interfaced Solar PV Powered Long Cable fed Submersible Induction Motor Water Pumps and Local Residential Loads

This paper presents the development of solar photovoltaic (PV) array powered submersible induction motor driven pump as well as meeting the residential loads demand. Intermittent power from solar causes the hindrance in the regular supply of water for pumping. The presented system introduces the utility grid as one of the possible solution, which ensures a reliable and continuous water pumping along with meeting the requirement of local household loads which includes single phase inverter fed loads and DC loads. The interfacing of the utility grid facilitates when the available solar power is less than the load demand. A boost converter is employed with single phase utility grid to reduce the total harmonic distortion (THD) in the grid current, improve input power factor using current multiplier approach, and it also regulates the DC link voltage. A sliding mode observer is implemented for speed estimation. The developed system is implemented in MATLAB/Simulink and the simulation results are obtained for various possible situations.