Design, simulation and performance analysis of photovoltaic solar water pumping system

Abstract The solar photovoltaic system is one of the technologies which is used to pump water in rural, isolated and desert areas where electric connection to the main grid is a problem. The study area is selected because of its higher natural resources of solar radiation over the year. Thus, that encourages us to adopt this study in order to understand the effects of various operating parameters on performance behaviour, which leads to enhancing the system design. This paper aims to assess the solar water pump system’s design and estimated performance in real environmental conditions. The PVsyst has been used to design and simulate a system which allows us to analyse the operating behaviour of a photovoltaic solar water pumping system. The solar PV pumping system design is considered; the photovoltaic module has characteristics and the pumping system characteristics. The photovoltaic array losses due to temperature were estimated about −14.3% and the soiling losses represented approximately −5%. The results showed that performance losses were significant variance in the months of the summer season from May to July. Therefore, their implication on the water flow rates significantly decreases throughout the months of the summer season from May to July, respectively.