ANNOUNCEMENTS
Globally, Solar Photovoltaic (SPV) technology proved its potential as a sustainable energy source and demonstrated the fastest growth compared with other renewable energy technologies over the last 15 years. Accordingly, the Indian government is determined to set up 175 Giga-watts (GW) of renewable-based power generation capacity by 2022. Photovoltaic technology has its expansion in a centralized and decentralized manner. Centralized systems are the systems of the larger capacity connected to the transmission network, while on the other hand, decentralized systems are of a small capacity and may be connected to the small local distribution network. For this study, Solar Photovoltaic Water Pumping System (SPVWPS) is selected as a decentralized system. Based on the literature review and research gap, the two broader objectives are set for this thesis. The first objective is “to enhance the performance efficiency of solar water pumping systems.” The second objective is “to develop a decentralized hybrid solar PV system for an existing application to minimize the energy losses.” For the first objective, initially, the available methods in the country for the performance assessment of SPV pumps have been assessed, and further improvements in testing methods have been proposed to cover the climatic variations. Then the optimization in solar water pumps has been proposed through efficiency improvement of SPV pumps based on the pumps operational data and ground-based weather data from the different climatic zones in India. A new selection method is proposed for solar photovoltaic pumps based on the Solar Operating Duty Head (SODH) based on weighted efficiency. During the study, it is found that some of the energy is wasted, which is below the threshold, and the non-operational period of SPVWPS, which is significantly high and cannot be utilized through the existing balance of systems. For the study under the second objective, long-term operation data of SPVWPS is collected and analyzed in terms of Capacity Utilization Factor (CUF) and Performance Ratio (PR). Further, a new type of power converter is proposed through which SPVWPS can operate in islanded, grid-connected, and hybrid mode. With experimental and mathematical analysis, the control strategy is proposed to enhance energy- efficiency, which is impossible through the conventional SPVWPS. Verification is done with the experimental analysis in all the operational modes.
