Agricultural irrigation is significant for the agriculture development in Egypt as most of the lands are quite sandy and the rainfall is extremely low. The solar powered irrigation systems using GTAKE solar pump drives SLR01A are helping farmers in Egypt to save the cost of energy, have minimal environmental impact, and produce no noise and pollution.

To meet the increasing food demand for the rapidly growing population in Egypt, lands in the western desert and other desert areas were reclaimed for agriculture business. Very high evapotranspiration and sandy soils require frequent water supply to ensure that the water will not leach towards deeper soil layers where it will be unreachable for the crops. Irrigation agriculture hence becomes essential in Egypt, explains Mr. Joseph, the CEO of SOTE. Usually these areas are far from grid power supply and conventionally resort to diesel generator to pump the water. Taking into account the costs of transportation of diesel, maintenance and overhauling of generators, using diesel is no longer economically feasible or affordable for those farmers. Also high CO2 emissions, excessive noise, immense diesel spilling into the soil and potential risk of long-distance transportation of diesel to the farms are the ecological downsides of water pump systems powered by diesel generator. This makes the use of alternative energy sources, particularly the green energy sources, vital to the development of Egypt’s agricultural sector.

Compared with diesel generator pumps, the solar pumps are far more environmentally friendly, with a longer lifetime and lower maintenance costs. The irrigation system usually consists of four parts: PV cells, a solar pump drive, a motor and a pump. GTAKE solar pump drives support both AC power supply (from grid or diesel generator) and DC power supply (from PV cells or battery) and could automatically stop the pump at sunset and wake up the pump in the next morning when the sun radiation meets the energy threshold, which benefits the users from saving the time to turn off or turn on the system again when the irrigation should be maintained for a few days continuously.

“The biggest advantages are that GTAKE solar pump drives can start the pump earlier in the morning and stop the pump later at the sunset. Also the efficiency of its inbuilt MPPT (maximum power point tracking) proves to be higher than most of the other brands we have tested,” continues Mr. Joseph. “Besides, many other functions such as solar weak sleep, dry run protection, pump cleaning function, classified user modes, and flow calculation are quite useful for different applications.’’

GTAKE solar pump drives are now widely used in MENA regions and South America for agriculture irrigation, fish farming, wastewater treatment and municipal engineering. Some users are using GTAKE solar pump drives for swimming pools in Euro for the purpose of energy saving and environment protection. More and more other applications such as city parks, rockery waterfalls and fountains using GTAKE solar pump drives are exploited by our customers globally.