Solar-powered water pump for off-grid agricultural sites. Needs to run through cloudy stretches, handle panel degradation gracefully, and report status over cellular since the nearest technician is hours away.
The Solution
MPPT converter with perturb-and-observe tracking, Li-Ion battery bank for buffer storage, and a priority-based power manager: solar feeds the pump directly when available, battery fills the gaps, and the system curtails pump duty cycle when state-of-charge drops below a configurable threshold rather than deep-discharging the pack.
Results
Cellular reporting cut site visits from monthly to quarterly. Most issues (clogged filter, low panel output from dust) can be diagnosed remotely. One deployment has been running for over two years with only seasonal panel cleaning.
How the power is shared
Solar first, battery second, never a deep discharge. The pump runs from the panel when there is sun, the battery fills the gaps, and below a set state of charge the duty cycle is cut back instead of draining the pack, while the cellular link reports problems before anyone has to drive out.Chasing a peak that keeps moving. The panel only delivers its rated power at one voltage, and that voltage drops as clouds pass, as the panel heats up and as dust builds up on the glass. The perturb-and-observe tracker nudges the operating voltage, keeps the step that raised the power and reverses the one that lowered it, so the converter sits on the peak through the day and the pump gets every watt the panel can give.
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Solar-powered systems with remote monitoring are a regular part of the work.
