Design of solar powered water pumping system for a community drinking water supply in DRC

Abstract

The DRC is the second-largest African sub-Saharan country has no electricity to pump water in both modern and rural areas. Counting 19% national rate of the electricity access in the whole country, rural communities suffer from the scarcity of the grid electricity only almost 1% of the rural population is connected to the electric grid and Minova is not excluded. Households, health centres and schools that served us as a sizable population of the rural community in Minova are also affected. The use of solar energy using PV modules for providing drinkable water for rural areas of Minova has been presented using the Meteorological condition and coordinate of Minova and it has been shown that the monthly solar radiations were showed up to 4.896 kWh/m2/day, the designed PV array of 4kWp was capable of pumping water from a deep well of 40 m depth with a flow rate of 15.3m3/h to supply a community of population more than 500 people, one health centre and one primary school which counted 200 pupils. The detailed sizing system and analysis were provided by using some tools such as PVsyst and MATLAB/Simulink, besides, a storage tank of 76m3 was taken into consideration to supply water continuously for 4 days’ autonomy when the daily water demand is equivalent to 19000litres per day, a solar pump integrated with an MPPT-DC converter was selected in PVsyst based on the total dynamic head of 42.7, the water flow rate of 11.7 m3/h and the type of the pumping system which was a direct coupling with MPP-DC Converter to control the power from the PV array and much it with one of the motor pumps also the controller could sensor the water level in both the well and the tank.in Matlab/Simulink a brushless motor was analysed by taking into account the PV array of 4kWp and the result showed how performant the system is when the components are very well chosen. Finally, a discussion and result presentation were made based on different software and the comparison has shown that photovoltaic water pumping system is a promising alternative for supplying drinking water for the rural and remote area where the electricity from the grid is difficult to find, also it has been seen that the Solar pumping system is eco-friendly to the environment and cost-effective considering its maintenance cost compared diesel-powered for the water pumping system.