Reduction of Panel Size and Cost in Solar Pumping in Multi-Floored Buildings

Existing practice of solar water pumping in multi-floored buildings employs Top Floor Storage Method. In this method, considerable amount of water is pumped to unnecessary heights, resulting in energy wastage. Present paper discusses a novel scheme “Individual Floor Storage Method” for solar pumping. Here water is pumped to the required optimum heights thus avoiding wastage of energy. This results in reduction in panel size and hence in the net initial cost which is a significant advantage as the main demerit of solar pumping system is its high initial cost. In this paper, a comparison is made between both the methods for solar pumping system with battery backup for a 2floored house. It’s found from the tests that the solar panel size is reduced by 12.5% and the net cost is reduced by 11% with the proposed new method.