Model of evapotranspiration and groundwater level based on photovoltaic water pumping system

Jun Zhang, Jiahong Liu, Pietro Elia Campana, Ruiqiang Zhang, Jinyue Yan and Xuerui Gao

Applied Energy, 2014, vol. 136, issue C, 1132-1137

Abstract: Photovoltaic (PV) water pumping system has been proved being environmental-friendly and low energy-cost, which has a promising prospect in arid areas which are rich in solar energy resources. However, water resources remain to be one of the main restraints to the application of PV water pumping system widely. Models to evaluate the evapotranspiration and groundwater level in the well are estimated based on the data of a field trip, which was conducted in Wulanchabu grassland, Inner Mongolia, China. Data about the performance of the PV water pumping system, including evapotranspiration and the groundwater level variation were collected. In this paper, evapotranspiration is calculated by Penman–Monteith method and Theis formula is introduced to calculate the soil characters and simulate the groundwater level variation. PRMSE and Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency are used to validate the model performance with the collected lysimeter data and groundwater level. The results show that the modeling of the evapotranspiration and groundwater level is reliable. According to the water demand and energy demand, the method to optimize the pumping system is introduced. Based on the calculated result and collected data of water demand and groundwater level, groundwater in the site is abundant to support the system. However, due to the stickiness of the soil condition, the recharge rate is smaller than the pumping rate. According to the comparison, the current system is oversized. In this condition, the pump would run out of water, and have to stop pumping. Therefore, not only the water quantity is an important factor to be considered, the soil condition and recharge rate are also of great significance to the optimization of photovoltaic water pumping systems.

Keywords: Photovoltaic water pumping system; Evapotranspiration; Groundwater level; Theis formula; Penman–Monteith method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261914005406
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:136:y:2014:i:c:p:1132-1137

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2014.05.045

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().