Hybrid renewable power system for agriculture irrigation system

Abstract

The used of the non-renewable energy systems for agriculture irrigation has brought up lots of disadvantages to the environment as well as the public. Environmental friendly, lesser cost and sustainable development are the factors that have not been achieved by the current systems. In order to encounter this problem a stirling engine system, which utilizes the solar energy as its resources and releases no exhaust to the environment is proposed in this paper. The power system is connected to a water pump to work as the agriculture irrigation system. Stirling engine uses the theory of compression and expansion of a fluid and its working principle varies on the differences of the temperature of the fluid on two sides. The solar power is focused through a solar concentrator and then absorbed by the absorber of the stirling engine to heat up the temperature for the fluid at one side. A solar tracker is installed on the solar concentrator to increase the amount of the sunlight absorbed. There are several sensors used in order to collect data such as: temperature sensor for detecting the difference of the temperature level, IR sensor to calculate the rotational speed of flywheel in stirling engine and flow sensor to determine the water flow rate at the output of the water pump. The monitoring systems for all the variables are created using National Instruments LabVIEW 2012. The developed prototype stirling engine was able to power the water pump to provide an average flow rate of 1.2 l/m. Building on a bigger scale can enhance the performance of the system. © 2014 IEEE.