Need a water pump on a remote property. ReNew helps you find the pump that’s right for you.
Whether it be for watering stock, plant irrigation, or for providing potable water for household use, pumping systems must be reliable and easy to maintain.
Water may need to be pumped from a creek or river, sometimes from a dam, or drawn up from a well or bore. These tasks all require different pumps and the amount of water, and the head it needs to be pumped to, vary from site to site.
Mains power may not be available or the pump is far removed from the house, so they are often required to be powered from an alternative energy source such as solar panels or wind power.
Due to these variations in pumping requirements, there are many different types of pumps on the market. These include the well-known windmill-powered bore pumps, solar bore pumps, reticulation pumps and pressure pumps. There are also numerous types in each of these categories, sometimes making selecting a pump for a particular job a difficult task.
Many pumps are available in either a combined pump/motor package, or as a separate pump on its own—ideal if you already have a suitable motor and want to save some money. Others may come with solar panels, maximiser and wiring harness depending on the supplier, making it very difficult to compare prices and specifications.
For some, 240-volt powered pumps may at first appear an obvious choice, but they require AC power to operate, necessitating the use of batteries and inverters or expensive solar pump controllers, thus increasing system cost and complexity and possibly reducing system efficiency; an unsuitable characteristic for remote pumping. There are also so many shapes and sizes of 240 volt pumps on the market that it would be impossible to cover them all.
This guide looks at pumps designed to be powered from renewable energy sources—solar, wind and water. It includes DC electric pumps, as well as pumps directly driven by wind or water power.
Read the full article in ReNew 108
This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 2:35 pm