ABSTRACT
This chapter considers two configurations, in order to obtain the theoretical performance of photovoltaic (pv) pump with a permanent magnet (pm) motor and centrifugal pump. These are direct-coupled system with no battery storage and direct-coupled system with a maximum-power point tracker (mppt) as an interface device. The components of a direct-coupled system should be chosen such that maximum possible power is extracted from the modules. Series motors also give reasonably good adaptation, if not the best, as a component of a direct-coupled system. The direct-coupled system with tracking gives an increase of 2.5% over the system with the mppt without tracking. The analysis of the interaction between the dc motor and the pv generator provides an interesting design criterion other than the selection of a suitable motor. The need to optimize the dimensions of the solar array, for a given site, arises because of the relatively high cost of solar cells.
