Solar-powered Irrigation for Shelek, Kazakhstan

Abstract

The city of Shelek, Kazakstan receives inconsistent access to electricity due to an expensive and unstable grid. As a highly agrarian society, it is important that family produced gardens have access to water in order to supply their families with food and income provided from the crops sale. In order to assist with this problem, a scale prototype of a solar-powered irrigation system was designed and analyzed. Additionally, a mathematical model was created to obtain design recommendations for a full-scale implementation. The main requirements for this project include a solar power source to drive a water pump that can feed an irrigation system. With the water pump and solar panel specifications mostly dependent on the amount of water necessary to properly irrigate the crops, it became clear that the main design driver was water needs. That specification along with the depth of the well then determines the type of the water pump, which in turn specifies the power requirements for the solar panel. Several concepts were generated and functional decomposition was conducted to specify the goals of the irrigation system and outline the engineering specifications. The remaining details such as the irrigation system, water storage, and energy storage were varied to examine the design parameters and understand what was feasible, necessary, and cost effective. A scoring system was developed in order to rank the concepts and bring to light the advantages and disadvantages of each concept. Ultimately, the system that utilizes an elevated water storage reservoir that provides potential energy fed water lines to a drip irrigation system was chosen for its efficiency at delivering water in an arid region. The scale model, which acts as a proof of concept, was empirically analyzed as a means to evaluate the system and the efficacy of the theoretical model.