The world's first CPV stand-alone system - water supply in remote areas of Egypt

Within the EU funded project NACIR a Concentrating Photovoltaic (CPV) stand-alone system is developed to provide electric power for water pumping, desalination and irrigation application. The system design requires only small sized battery storages to secure power supply for the measurement and control equipment as well as for the motors of the trackers to orientate them in the morning or after a cloudy period during the day. The first part of this paper provides a description of the model based system layout and the model based development of the energy management system including the used "Universal Energy Supply Protocol" for optimizing control of the system and its components. In the second part the demonstration system is described, which was installed in August 2010 on the test site of the water research centre Wadi El Natrun in Egypt. This system consists of five CPV trackers with 30 kWp, delivering energy for pumping, irrigation and desalination.