A novel third generation solar cells feeding water pumping system under partial shading conditions

Abstract

Abstract In this work, a proposed 3rd generation photovoltaics array called dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) feeding a synchronous reluctance motor (SynRM) during partial shading conditions is investigated and experimentally implemented for a water pumping system performance enhancement. In the pumping system under investigation for attaining maximum power from the DSSCs array a proposed control strategy for driving the conventional inverter which is directly matches the array and the SynRM is implemented. Thus the system has not neither a dc-dc converter nor batteries. The proposed control strategy of the inverter also enables driving the SynRM at maximum possible torque/ Ampere. As a result a noticeable enhancement in the system performance is achieved and both the system cost and complexity are reduced. Furthermore, the system investigated under both uniform and partial shading situations based on two maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques. The first one is the conservative perturb and observe (P&O) MPPT while the other is differential evolution (DE) based MPPT. The results reveal that during the uniform irradiation case both of the MPPT succeeded to efficiently track the point of maximum power. While, during the partial shading scenarios the DSSCs array output power is higher at using DE MPPT than the case of using P&O MPPT. Consequently, the water pump flow rate is higher at using DE MPPT during partial shading. Moreover, a complete lab bench test is constructed to validate the simulation work experimentally where agreement between simulation and experimental results is detected.