PHOTOVOLTAIC-POWERED PISTON-TYPE WATER PUMP CONTROLLED BY A LINEAR MOTOR

This paper presents a unique technique to control a photovoltaic (PV)- powered piston-type water pump. The method uses a linear motor mounted directly onto the piston rod of the pump. This linear motor method re places the traditional piston-type water pump, which employs a DC moto r with a bulky gear mechanism to convert the rotational motion of the motor to linear motion for the piston. The electric circuit used to co ntrol the linear motor employs a four-quadrant chopper, which uses fou r fast MOSFETs and a simple logic circuit for the switching. The exper imental results show that the py-powered linear motor system can be us ed as an alternative to the PV-powered DC motor gear system.