Developing a Dimensioning Tool for Photovoltaic Water Pumping System

Abstract

Growing interest in renewable energy worldwide has contributed to the development and the proliferation of solar systems. Many applications are built on solar energy because of the great availability and sustainability of solar radiation. A particular interest is geared toward photovoltaic water pumpingsystem (PWPS) which happens to be very reliable for the supply of drinking water to off-grid areas. However, the sizing of photovoltaic water pumping system has been a great challenge involving intensive mathematical calculations and also long collection of data on solar radiation and weather parameters such as temperature, humidity and others. Notwithstanding, an accurate sizing of the PWPS is very important in the sense that an oversizing can result in heavy financial burden while an under-sizing may not satisfy the targeted population in terms of water need. In view of this, many research workshave investigated a reliable and accurate method of measurement. The current paper covers the development of an application tool,using Visual Delphi, based on a mathematical model of sizing photovoltaic water pumping. A database made of different solar panel with their various characteristics as well as data collected from the Retscreen software on weather in West Africa were adopted by the software to ease the dimensioning task. The software wasbuilt and tested against existing data to prove its reliability.