Maximum power point tracking of solar pumping system based on BLDC motor under partial shading condition

Abstract

This thesis is part of the research work dedicated for exploitation of solar photovoltaic energy. Due to the increasing energy demands, the use of photovoltaic energy has increased significantly in the worldwide, especially in remote and isolation regions. Off-grid photovoltaic systems, particularly water pumping system, is becoming more widespread. The use of photovoltaic energy as an energy source for water pumping is considered as one of the most promising areas of the photovoltaic applications. The photovoltaic pumping systems are basically operated in two ways, with or without battery bank. The study presented in this thesis focuses on the improvement of photovoltaic power extracting for a battery-less pumping system. In this context, many researchers are committed to invent the algorithms for extracting the maximum energy from a photovoltaic array. It is the principle named maximum power point tracking (MPPT), which is the main object of our research. In the first, an MPPT strategy based on the cuckoo swarm optimization technique has been developed to improve the performance of the perturb and observe (P&O) algorithm under sudden irradiance changes and partial shading condition. Afterwards, a high-performance control scheme has been developed for a photovoltaic pumping system based on the brushless DC motor, in order to maximize the delivered power by the photovoltaic array, to maintain the speed of the motor and to regulate the DC-link voltage. The control scheme is based on hysteresis control. In addition, this scheme has been confirmed through simulation performed with MATLAB/Simulink.