The QPV team together with the Solar Energy Institute of the UPM (IES-UPM) has published a new paper with the title “Experimental Performance Evaluation of a PV-Powered Center-Pivot Irrigation System for a Three-Year Operation Period”. This article shows experimental data on the performance of a high power constant-pressure PV irrigation system. Below is the abstract:
High-power diesel-based or grid-connected irrigation systems are being replaced by battery-free, high-power stand-alone Photovoltaic Irrigation Systems (PVIS) that reduce energy costs by up to 80% and for which no experimental performance data are available. The operation of PVIS is affected by various factors, some unrelated to the quality of the PV system itself, that generate losses that affect their performance: losses that vary with the crop and its irrigation period, losses intrinsic to the PVIS design, and losses that happen as a consequence of the behavior of the end-user. To better understand the impact of each type of loss, the traditional performance ratio was factorized. This paper provides the PV community with experimental data on the performance of a battery-free 160 kWp PV-powered constant-pressure center-pivot irrigation system. The system was analyzed over three years of real operation, during which the performance ratio ranged from 49.0 to 53.2%.
The full text is available as open access from the journal Energies. Part of this research was made possible thanks to funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program to SERENDI-PV project under grant agreement Nº 953016, project in which QPV is a member.