Solar Powered Water Systems: Design and Installation Guide

Get comprehensive guidance on all technical aspects of designing and installing solar powered water systems for rural water supply.

This free guide was created with UNICEF and Water Mission. It has been downloaded by people in over 130 countries.

Solar Powered Water Systems: Operations and Maintenance Guide

Learn how to operate and maintain solar powered water systems. This guide’s adaptable format can be tailored to fit your unique context.

Whether you’re an operator, technician, or trainer, this resource provides practical insights for ensuring sustainable water solutions.

We expect an increase in reliability in modern tech – unless one is a climate scold, and unless the topic in question is solar and wind power:

Wind and solar have been growing as a share of US electrical power generation over the last two decades. State and federal mandates and subsidies have driven the expansion of renewables because of their inherently and intermittent nature. But it’s clear that renewable electricity sources have a third strike: they are fragile and prone to weather damage and destruction. //

In May 2019, a massive hailstorm in West Texas destroyed 400,000 solar modules of the Midway Solar Project, about 60% of the facility. The project was only one year old. The system was rebuilt, costing insurers more than $70 million. //

This whole problem presents a doom loop of unreliable and fragile electrical generation. The climate scolds would have us believe that the weather is growing hotter/colder/more unpredictable because of human activity causing climate change. And to solve the climate change that we have supposedly solved, we must restrict further our use of reliable energy sources for unreliable and fragile "green" energy systems like solar and wind power, which clutter up the landscape and are less reliable and more expensive than the traditional source.

The new microgrid controls accommodate distributed energy power system designs and have the ability to control renewable energy resources (solar and wind) and energy storage - providing a single interface control for a completely integrated microgrid power system.

Instead of needing constant power, new system adjusts to use whatever is available. //

“Unlike reverse osmosis, electrodialysis is an electrically driven process,” Bessette says. The membranes are arranged in such a way that the water is not pushed through them but flows along them. On both sides of those membranes are positive and negative electrodes that create an electric field, which draws salt ions through the membranes and out of the water. //

The two most important parameters in electrodialysis desalination are the flow rate of the water and the power you apply to the electrodes. To make the process efficient, you need to match those two. The advantage of electrodialysis is that it can operate at different power levels. When you have more available power, you can just pump more water through the system. When you have less power, you can slow the system down by reducing the water flow rate. You’ll produce less freshwater, but you won’t break anything this way. //

Octavus Ars Scholae Palatinae
18y
1,115
On average, it desalinated around 5,000 liters of water per day—enough for a community of roughly 2,000 people.
Is 2.5L per day really enough per person when that is below the adequate intake levels according to the Institute of Medicine? Let alone for other purposes such as cooking and hygiene.

The Institute of Medicine has recommended adequate intake (AI) values for total water at levels to prevent dehydration. The AI for men aged 19+ is 3.7 liters each day, and 3 liters (13 cups) of which should be consumed as beverages. The AI for women aged 19+ is 2.7 liters about 2.2 liters (9 cups) of which should be consumed as beverages each day.
Water: An Important Part of a Healthy Winter Diet : USDA ARS //

Team Tardigrade Ars Centurion
4y
370
Octavus said:
Is 2.5L per day really enough per person when that is below the adequate intake levels according to the Institute of Medicine? Let alone for other purposes such as cooking and hygiene.

Water: An Important Part of a Healthy Winter Diet : USDA ARS
Like most other things in medicine and science there are different viewpoints on what total water intake needs to be. This study says an average minimum of 1.8 L. I've seen several textbooks that list anything from 1.5 to 2.5 L. I've also see other estimates going as high as 3.5-4 L. Age, sex, renal function, diet, and metabolic disease all have impacts on these numbers.

Electrical engineers must learn to navigate industry codes and standards while designing battery energy storage systems (BESS)

In 2022, Florida was third in the nation, after California and Texas, in total solar power generating capacity, and solar energy accounted for more than 5% of Florida’s total net generation. About four-fifths of the state’s solar generation came from utility-scale (1 megawatt or larger) facilities. //

The Lake Placid Solar Power Plant is located in Highlands County, Fla., and suffered damage during Hurricane Milton. The facility opened in December 2019 and is 45 megawatts, which is enough to power more than 12,000 homes at peak production. //

The frequency of major storms and the costs associated with repair from them must be an essential part of any calculation when deciding if a new power facility is right for the region. It appears that green energy activists aren’t providing this data, but rather their visions of would should be based on their beliefs.

Theology is no way to power a civilization. //

rebelgirl in reply to CommoChief. | October 15, 2024 at 8:26 am
My son is a commercial electrician who works on residential and commercial solar installations. He says he would never have it.
They install the panels on roofs where no one takes into account the problems involved with reaching the source of a potential attic fire. //

Joe-dallas in reply to CommoChief. | October 15, 2024 at 5:01 pm
Correct – the capacity factor for solar during summer is around 35%
The capacity factor in the winter is around 6%

The texas freeze fiasco of Feb 2021,
Solar was producing around 12% capacity factor across the entire nation and a DROP of 60% – 70% wind production across the entire NORTH AMERICAN Continent for 7 DAYS

The InteliNeo 5500 is a microgrid controller that offers a cost-effective solution for combining traditional grid or gen-sets with renewable energy sources to create a reliable and efficient power generation system. The panel-mount design with a 5” colour TFT display is suitable for packagers and integrators who are looking to integrate clean and sustainable energy to existing power generation sites.

Its Modbus master ensures compatibility with a large number of preconfigured devices (including those of Fronius and many more).

• Single controller for renewables power sources and battery energy storage system
• Native microgrid applications for on & off-grid systems with renewable energy and storage
• 5" TFT Colour panel-mounted display with 480 x 800 pixels
• Microgrid screen templates for quick view
• Support of up to 8* genset/mains controllers on CAN2
• Modbus master TCP & RTU support of up to 9 devices

Understand how BESS can be incorporated into electrical systems, and synchronized with generators.

Battery energy storage systems (BESS) have become essential in modern energy management, effectively addressing the intermittency of renewable energy sources and enhancing grid stability. This course provides a comprehensive exploration of BESS, focusing on benefits, diverse applications and the critical parameters necessary for optimizing performance.

Additionally, the course will delve into the synchronization and load-sharing of BESS with synchronous generator sets, offering a thorough understanding of how these systems work together to maximize efficiency and reliability.

Without sufficient synchronous grid inertia, the grid becomes unstable and a blackout occurs.

Inertia refers to a system’s capability to resist change. For a power grid, greater synchronous inertia confers greater ability to resist frequency changes. //

In contrast to gigantic 2,256 megawatt nuclear power plants such as Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) near San Luis Obispo, California which provide very large amounts of synchronous grid inertia, so-called inverter-based resources (IBRs) such as solar powered generators, wind power generators, and batteries supply negligible amounts of synchronous grid inertia. //

Prior to the introduction of significant penetrations of IBRs, each power grid's synchronous generators (coal and natural gas-fired generators, large hydroelectric dams, geothermal plants, and nuclear power plants) had sufficient synchronous grid inertia to assure power grid stability. The synchronous generators have a large amount of rotational inertia as a consequence of having massive rotating turbines and massive rotating generator rotors. (See photograph below.)

As a simplified example, each of the pair of DCPP’s generators have rotating components which weigh in excess of a million pounds (500 tons.) DCPP’s turbines rotate 30 times per second. The rotating magnetic field induces the 60 cycle per second (Hertz) AC voltage (25,000 Volts) and AC current (45,120 Amperes) in the stator windings of each unit. In response to perturbations in grid frequency, the rotational kinetic energy can be instantaneously converted to changes in the output power of the generator which tend to stabilize the generator’s output frequency and voltage.

Some 500 miles west of Beijing, in the desert of the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia, a solar-power project is underway that is — even by China’s standards — audacious in scale and, most remarkably, in ambition.

Officials in Ordos are over the next several years going to install 100 gigawatts of solar panels — more than three times as much capacity as the United States is currently building nationwide — along a stretch of land 250 miles (400 kilometers) long and 3 miles (5 km) wide.

The goal isn’t just to generate huge amounts of clean power. It is also to restore a no man’s land, bringing greenery and even livestock to an area roughly the size of Puerto Rico. In doing so, the local authorities are doubling down on two of China’s most successful efforts of recent years: An epic expansion of solar power, and major progress in combating desertification. //

Initially, those operating in desert climes adopted measures such as creating sand barriers and planting trees in order to safeguard their operations. “They must take actions to minimize the damage they would bring to the local ecology and environment while also protecting their own bases from being damaged by sandstorms,” Wang Weiquan, the general secretary of the Energy and Environment Committee of China Energy Research Society, a Beijing-based NGO, told me. “Much to their surprise, they found that their work led grass to grow in the desert.”

Indeed, according to a 2022 study, desert-based solar power projects have resulted in “a significant greening trend”: About one-third of the land under solar plants built in 12 Chinese deserts has seen vegetation grow.

As another recent study showed, solar panels do not only create shade, enabling plants and vegetables to grow, but also reduce the ground wind speed, preventing sand from being picked up.

Solar companies saw opportunities: They started to search for suitable crops to grow under the panels. One plant they found worked was liquorice, which can survive in the harsh environment and make the soil more fertile by absorbing nitrogen from the air and converting it to the ground. //

There are also environmental concerns. For one, most Chinese developers build their desert bases by bulldozing sand dunes, and this could ultimately lead to sand and dust storms, a Chinese sand-control expert told me, speaking on condition of anonymity. A previous study also showed that covering the Sahara with solar panels may, in fact, worsen global warming by potentially increasing surrounding air temperatures markedly and reshaping rainfall patterns worldwide.

The TYNDP 2024 will assess how 176 transmission and 33 storage projects respond to the TYNDP scenarios. Learn more about the projects by clicking on their location on the map below or filter projects by country, type of infrastructure or status. More information about the projects will become available with the release of TYNDP 2024 for public consultation at the end of 2024.

EU is planning power lines from the wind fields on the Atlantic down to the south – and from the sunny deserts up to the north.

https://tyndp2024.entsoe.eu/projects-map

In June of last year, a 14,000-panel 5.2 MW solar panel farm called the Scottsbluff Community Solar Array in Nebraska was blasted by baseball-sized hail. There wasn’t any question that the array would be brought back online because the power company had no choice. Leaving it would have been a PR disaster worse than having the array destroyed by hail.

It took 7 months to bring it back online. //

Solar releases a nasty thing called nitrogen trifluoride. And, what, pray tell is NF3’s impact on the environment? It is reportedly 17,000 times worse for the atmosphere than the dreaded CO2.

And there are other inconvenient facts like 80 percent of the silicon torn from the earth during the mining is eventually lost making crystalline silicon. A cancer biologist named David H. Nguyen noted that toxic chemicals associated with solar farms include cadmium telluride, cadmium gallium, copper indium selenide, and a bunch of other nasty toxins. Sometimes you have to wreck the environment to save it.

Solar acolytes will grudgingly admit that there is a chemical downside to manufacturing solar panels – like a byproduct called silicon tetrachloride. It’s toxic and, if not handled properly, will cause severe burns. If it is inadvertently combined with water it can create hydrochloric acid. But hey, they are made in China so, never mind. //

Northeast of Edward Air Force Base sits the tiny town of Boron. The surrounding desert is home to desert wildlife including the Joshua tree. It will soon be home to a vast solar farm owned by Aratina Solar Center. Joshua trees can survive 200 years in the desert heat but they won’t survive in Aratina’s heat sink of a project.

About 3,500 Joshua trees will be uprooted and destroyed to make room for the solar farm. Aratina (owned mostly by a private equity group known as KKR). To mitigate the bad press, Aratina is shredding trees on-site rather than piling them like so many corpses. //

On completion, the project will blacken about 2,300 acres but it will generate power for up to 180,000 homes. //

Sometimes you gotta kill a tree, to save a tree.  

This graph shows the number of sunspots seen each year for 400 years (from 1600 to 2000). There were almost no sunspots during the Maunder Minimum. During the Dalton Minimum, there were fewer sunspots than normal. //

The first written record of sunspots was made by Chinese astronomers around 800 B.C. Court astrologers in ancient China and Korea, who believed sunspots foretold important events, kept records off and on of sunspots for hundred of years. An English monk named John of Worcester made the first drawing of sunspots in December 1128. //

It would appear that sunspots not only have a connection to geomagnetic activity at Earth, but they play a role in climate change as well. In the last thousands of years, there have been many periods where there were not many sunspots found on the Sun. The most famous is a period from about 1645 to 1715, called the Maunder Minimum. This period corresponds to the middle of a series of exceptionally cold winters throughout Europe known as the Little Ice Age. Scientists still debate whether decreased solar activity helped cause the Little Ice Age, or if the cold snap happen to occur around the same time as the Maunder Minimum. In contrast, a period called the Medieval Maximum, which lasted from 1100 to 1250, apparently had higher levels of sunspots and associated solar activity. This time coincides (at least partially) with a period of warmer climates on Earth called the Medieval Warm Period. Sunspot counts have been higher than usual since around 1900, which has led some scientists to call the time we are in now the Modern Maximum.

Design solar systems

This is a virtual learning experience for rural water professionals and partners to analyze rural water services, evaluate the opportunities and risks and promote solar-powered water systems (SPWS) to improve water sustainability and equity supply programs. The guide has been delivered in English, French, and Spanish to participants in over 60 countries.

Random US Citizen
7 hours ago edited
I hope the loons win. Because CA deserves it.

On the other hand, maybe Diablo can claim it identifies as a solar plant and ask CA politicians to pay for energy reassignment surgery?

Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

The forecast for California’s solar power expansion is cloudy, with a good chance of pain.