MIWO-IC Based MPPT of PV Fed Water Supply System Driven by Induction Motor with a Five Level Inverter

Water supply systems through motor-pump set are required in many places including domestic, industries and agriculture. Power consume by utility grid to drive the motors is more burden and demand high reactive power due to normally using induction motors to drive water pump. Hence, powered by Photovoltaic system (PVS) based induction motor driven standalone water supply systems are providing solution for many issues including over load in grid, pollution, etc. in general, battery storage units are highly recommended for PVS based standalone power supply units. However, cost will be increased by using batteries due to regular maintenance, capital cost, replacements, safety and size etc. In fact, no need of storing power in the case of water pumping applications, instead of using batteries, the energy produced by PVS can be utilized directly to pump the water by using proper energy management and control. Hence, battery less water supply system is considered in this paper. To harvest possible maximum energy from PVS during partial shading phenomenon, the incremental conductance (IC) algorithm is combined with a MIWO: Modified invasive weed optimization technique. The IC algorithm, based on MIWO, adjusts the voltage signal reference value according to the solar irradiance on multiple panels in PVS to achieve the operation of Maximum Power Point (MPP). In order to eliminate an extra converter, a single stage system is established by working a five level inverter as a MPPT converter of the PVS. A speed sensorless control is developed on a five level inverter by balancing power between generation and consumption to manage energy management system in this paper. Hardware in the - Loop is performed on the OPAL-RT platform to test the performance of the developed model.