A Proposed Utility Assisting Agricultural Pump Controller for Agricultural Grid-tied Photovoltaic (PV) Systems

In India, about 17% of the total electrical energy consumption is utilized in the agricultural sector of which the majority is used for driving the irrigation pump. Traditionally diesel-based pumps were extremely popular for running the irrigation pumps which were not only less efficient but also have environmental impacts as well. Therefore, the government is encouraging the use of electric motors so as to overcome the limitations. Government of India (GoI) is also targeting the utilization of solar energy for running these agricultural pumps and deliver the surplus energy to the grid. Due to the unpredictable nature of the renewable energy sources, demand response (DR) is a useful tool to take care of this problem. While investigating the behavior of a 3-Φ induction motor (I.M.) fed by a power electronic device, it was observed that the power output of the motor can be controlled by controlling the power electronic converter. Based on this observation, a methodology is proposed for controlling such motors by controlling power electronic converter. This can be useful to meet the requirements of demand response weakly in the grid-interacted PV fed agricultural sector.