AIMS Environmental Science, 2015, 2(3): 697-717. doi: 10.3934/environsci.2015.3.697 Research article

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Feasibility study of a solar photovoltaic water pumping system for rural Ethiopia

Misrak Girma, Abebayehu Assefa, Marta Molinas

1 School of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Addis Ababa Institute of Technology, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia;
2 Department of Engineering Cybernetics, Faculty of Information Technology, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

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Solar Photovoltaic (SPV) water pumping system is one of the best technologies that utilize the solar energy to pump water from deep well underground water sources and to provide clean drinking water worldwide. The availability of abundant solar radiation and enough underground water sources in Ethiopia can be combined together to make clean drinking water available to rural communities. The software PVsyst 5.56 was used to study the feasibility of solar photovoltaic water pumping system in the selected sites. The designed system is capable of providing a daily average of 10.5, 7 and 6.5 m³/day for 700, 467 and 433 people in Siadberand Wayu, Wolmera and Enderta sites respectively, with average daily water consumption of 15 liters per day per person and the costs of water without any subsidy, are approximately 0.1, 0.14 and 0.16 $/m³for each site respectively. If diesel generator is used instead of solar photovoltaic water pumping system, to provide the same average daily water for the selected community, the costs of water without any subsidy are approximately 0.2, 0.23 and 0.27 $/m³ for each site respectively. A life cycle cost analysis method was also carried out for economic comparison between solar PV and the diesel pumping system. The results of this study are encouraging the use of the PV system for drinking water supply in the remote areas of the country.

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Copyright Info: © 2015, Misrak Girma, et al., licensee AIMS Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licese (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

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