Real-Time Implementation of Solar-Based Water Irrigation System

Abstract

In this period of proper usage of energy and economy, solar energy comes in scene which is abundant in nature. Converting this abundant energy into useable form will reduce the burden on other fossil fuels and at the same time increase our energy needs. In this paper, a system comprising of solar as the primary source and battery as backup has been modeled for the solar irrigation purpose where the conventional power supply may not available in rural areas. The energy derived from the cell is used to power the load. A DC-DC boost converter has been used to boost the voltage from solar and battery. A single-phase full-bridge inverter has been used between the DC-DC boost converter and the load to convert the DC voltage into AC voltage. Filter circuit has been proposed to reduce the harmonics in the inverter voltage. Since solar irradiation is variable in nature, a conventional proportional-integral (PI) controller has been implemented for the DC-DC boost converter, so as to make the output DC voltage as constant. The modeling has been done in MATLAB/Simulink, and simulation analysis has been done. In order to validate the performance of the system in real time, the system has been evaluated in OPAL RT software. Rapid control prototype (RCP) has been developed for improving the control strategies while reducing the risk, cost and time. The closed-loop feedback has been implemented using Arduino with real-time simulator. The simulation and real-time results show that the proposed system is highly suitable for the irrigation purpose and have effective and efficient results with variable irradiation.