Title: Study of performance evaluation, economic and environmental impact of 1.68 kWp DC operated submersible centrifugal solar pump with autotracker using low cost DAS

Authors: Md. Shafiqul Islam; Md. Rakibul Hasan

Addresses: Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, 1000, Bangladesh; Center for Research Reactor, Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission, E-12/A, Sher-E-Bangla Nagar, Agargoan, Dhaka, 1207, Bangladesh ' Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, 1000, Bangladesh; Center for Research Reactor, Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission, E-12/A, Sher-E-Bangla Nagar, Agargoan, Dhaka, 1207, Bangladesh

Abstract: The widespread application of renewable energy sources requires the use of low cost data acquisition system (DAS) both for monitoring the system operation and control of its operation. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the performances of the 1.68 kWp DC operated submersible centrifugal solar pump with autotracking system using microcontroller based home-made low cost universal DAS. In order to evaluate the actual discharge capacity with respect to designed capacity under local solar irradiance and photovoltaic array power output, it is not convenient to gather years' data manually. The developed home-made low cost DAS is used to collect data every minute and to store the average of this data to the personal computer in a suitable manner. In order to verify the performances of the 1.68 kWp DC operated submersible centrifugal solar pump with autotracking system, solar irradiance, discharge capacity and efficiency of the pump with respect to time is evaluated from the collected data using the DAS. Results found that off grid areas of Bangladesh, PV based solar pumping systems are spin off economic and environmental benefits compared with diesel based water pumping system.

Keywords: low cost DAS; data acquisition systems; solar pumps; autotracking; performance monitoring; economic impact; environmental impact; performance evaluation; submersible pumps; centrifugal pumps; solar energy; solar power; microcontrollers; photovoltaic arrays; solar irradiance; discharge capacity; pump efficiency; Bangladesh.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESD.2016.076362

International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development, 2016 Vol.15 No.2, pp.146 - 158

Received: 27 Jan 2015
Accepted: 01 May 2015
Published online: 05 May 2016 *

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