From pv magazine India
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar have designed and developed a solar system for water pumping which can easily be moved from one farm to another. The kit is useful for pumping water in remote areas and helps small scale farmers who could pool money to use the equipment on a shared basis.
The technology has already been deployed in hard-to-reach areas of the state of Odisha.
IIT Bhubaneswar academics Srinivas Bhaskar Karanki, of the school of electrical sciences, and Satish D Dhandole, from the school of mechanical sciences, led the project.
Karanki told pv magazine: “We have used a tractor trolley for the movable system. The trolley is designed to have a foldable structure to accommodate six panels. The trolley needs to be attached with the tractor head to move from one place to another. The system works with two different types of pumps, one submersible and the other surface-mounted. The surface-mount is taken along with the movable SPV [solar photovoltaic] system. Further, the movable structure is equipped with an inverter.”
The system can generate enough power to operate submersible and monoblock-pump AC motors even at low irradiation. The inverter circuitry is designed to achieve maximum solar energy harvesting with single-stage power conversion from DC to AC, thereby increasing reliability and reducing the overall cost.
The system can also be operated from a single-phase grid electricity supply, if needed, and is designed to operate a 2hp AC pump with the inverter able to accommodate up to 5hp loads.
The mobile solar pumps have been installed in 13 locations in districts including Angul, Dhenkanal, Puri, Bhadrak, Korput, Keonjhar, Nayagarh, and Mayurbhaj. Three more systems have been installed in the villages of Podapada, Kanaspada, and Khudupur, with those settlements having been adopted by IIT Bhubaneswar under the government’s Unnat Bharat Abhiyan policy, which aims to leverage scientific advances developed in academic institutions in rural settings.
The mobile solar project is funded by the Directorate of Agriculture and Food Production of the government of Odisha under the central government’s Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana agricultural development program.
Author: Uma Gupta
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.