An African solution for water and electricity supply, using a standalone photovoltaic based Quasi Z Source Inverter

Abstract

Africa is the major world region in which populations are deeply affected by water and electricity supply shortages, in spite being blessed with the highest world water aquifer reserves as well as advantageous solar irradiance that encourages harvesting of electricity using photovoltaic cells. This paper deals with the design and performances analysis of a three phase Quasi Z Source Inverter (QZSI) to ensure efficient water and electricity supply while mitigating the effect of greenhouse gases, all this in an African context. The QZSI will simultaneously supply the motor pump set, extract the maximum power (MPP) from photovoltaic arrays as well as supply an auxiliary AC load under suitable predefined condition. The MPP will be tracked by an adaptive variable step size fuzzy logic based incremental conductance MPPT algorithm. The designed system has been developed and implemented in Matlab Simulink. Results shows that with this single stage power converter, the system can at once drive a motor pump set when the water level in the storage tank is at the lower threshold and power up AC loads when the water tank is full. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method in increasing performances of the water pumping and three phase AC power generation has been validated, hence the system is susceptible allowing more people accessing to water and electricity supply services.