Solar and Wind Powered Pumps

What are solar and wind powered pumps used for?

The solar and wind powered pump system was designed for getting water to remote rural locations and is used extensively worldwide.

The main application is for getting water from wells or boreholes for livestock or drinking water. Solar and wind powered pumps can also be used for surface water management and irrigation of fields and greenhouses.

How does it work?

The process is simple, the pump is submersible and is lowered into your water source and it is powered by a direct drive renewable energy system: Either a wind turbine or solar panels (PV). The solar panels or wind turbine produce electricity which is passed through a control unit and can be connnected to batteries as well, and this drives the pump.

The pump can be powered by wind turbines, solar panels, generators and a combination of some or all three.

The following scenarios are all possible as well as combinations including generators and water storage.

What are the benefits?

Can be high or low head, the pumps and power can be sized accordingly
Dry running protection
Simple to maintain
Over voltage protection
Over temperature protection
Wide voltage range

Important Notes:

This solution is as close as you can get to an off the peg solution to pumping, but with solar and wind power pumping, as with every renewable energy application, varies with its available resources. I.e. if you have great wind speed constantly you should probably go for wind powered water pumps OR if your wind resource is very intermittent you may need solar and wind power.

Another factor to bear in mind is your pumping load and head. The bigger the head and the more volume you require, the more power we need to find. Load and head have a bearing on the cost due to the number of panels or size of wind turbine required.

If consistency is important, then a combination of technologies is a good idea, which you can back up with a battery bank or generator if you have constant demand.

How much does it cost?

Sadly this is hard to give you a ballpark, but as a guide a very simple system for a small requirement can cost anything from £6k - £20k. The larger your requirement for power the more the cost rises.

Our site survey is designed to give you the most accurate quotation to help with this.

What to do next

Call 0800 023 2326 or fill in the form on our contact page.

Get an idea of your water requirements including the head and volume you need daily.

If your location does not have a postcode then a grid reference would be great, this allows us to work out your renewable resources (how much sun and wind you get).

We will arrange a free survey and work out the best combination of pump and power system required whether it is solar or wind or both.