Comparative study of photovoltaic based power converter topologies for pumping applications

Abstract

This paper provides comparative information about the pumping applications of the Photovoltaic (PV) based power converter fed centrifugal pump. The PV panel/array is connected with the converters with the MPPT techniques (P&O algorithm) which extracts the maximum power from the PV. The converter performs the buck or boost operation depending on the requirement and the output voltage from these converters are given to the Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) of the rated voltage 415V. The inverter converts the DC voltage to its equivalent AC voltage and AC voltage of 415V is given as the input to the three-phase Induction Motor (Three-phase IM) which further drives the centrifugal pump. Here, three converters namely SEPIC, Zeta, Landsman converters are used and their performances are investigated. Also the comparative study of the three converters is done and the results of various parameters obtained at the output of the three converters along with the output parameters of the motor and centrifugal pump. The simulation and execution of these three PV based pumping application systems are done in the MATLAB/Simulink environment. The results obtained from the comparative study helps us to select the best suited system for the pumping application.