Development and Computational Flow Analysis of GSM Based Automated Solar Water Pump

Environment friendly renewable energy systems are the need of time from domestic to industrial scale. Today, World is facing energy crisis due to shortage of conventional non-renewable energy which are linked with utilization of renewable resources. This research work comprise of development of solar water pump prototype for domestic and commercial purpose e.g., irrigation. The system contains the assembling of DC-motor with diaphragm pump and photovoltaic mono-crystalline solar panel. The pump is driven by solar energy solely through photovoltaic (PV) panel. The electrical energy supplied by panel can also be consumed for domestic usage during pump switched off period. Solar fraction utilization is efficiently enhanced by integrating maximum power point tracker (MPPT). The pump operation is automated by using global system for mobile (GSM) communication networking to facilitate the user. Communication operating code for micro-controller is developed using C-language and MATLAB software. Experiments are carried out for investigating the effect of pump head on flow rate with relevance of solar energy. Computational fluid dynamic analysis is performed for estimating the pressure and velocity variations as water flows through pump delivery head, especially across the bends of pipeline. The pump is modeled in GAMBIT and analysis is carried out using ANSYS-FLUENT. It is concluded that, 14W solar panel having 17% efficiency attached with 0.018hp pump gives output of 4.344 lit/h at 0.762-m head and the pump can be automated any time from any location covered by GSM network.