OPTIMAL CONFIGURATION AND FIELD EXPERIMENTS FOR THE PHOTOVOLTAIC SYSTEM OF A SOLAR-POWERED HOSE-DRAWN TRAVELER

High energy consumption is one of the disadvantages of hose-drawn travelers due to the use of water turbines. This study proposes a photovoltaic-powered electric motor instead of a water turbine to achieve high transmission efficiency. A stand-alone photovoltaic generation system (PVGS) was designed for a hose-drawn traveler. To achieve cost savings, a sizing optimization model was built for the PVGS. In the optimization model, the minimum annual cost of the system, which includes the initial capital, replacement, installation, operation, and maintenance costs, is taken as the objective function. The constraints include the battery's state of charge (SOC) and the power supply reliability, which is composed of the load loss of power supply probability (LPSP) and the energy excess percentage (EXC). The total power produced by the PV panels and the total battery capacity are the decision variables. The optimization model of the PVGS is solved through a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm based on a penalty function. The model is then applied to calculate the optimal configuration of a JP75-300 hose-drawn traveler. Comparisons between the optimal configuration and other six configuration schemes were conducted to verify the optimal solution results. Furthermore, field experiments were performed to test the performance. Finally, the effects of meteorological conditions, driving velocity, and LPSP on the optimal configuration and the annual cost of the PVGS are discussed. The results show that the optimal configuration of this PVGS are 432 W total power from PV panels and 172 Ah total battery capacity, and the optimization model results are the optimal configuration based on comparisons. The optimal configuration met the power requirements of the hose-drawn traveler for four days of field experiments, indicating that the optimal configuration is feasible.