Effect of Solar Powered Irrigation System on Crop Growth

Abstract

The solar powered irrigation system is an adaptive plants and crops irrigation system. The purposes of  the irrigation system are to provide water delivering schedule to the crops to ensure all the crops have enough water for their healthy growth, to reduce the amount of water waste in irrigation, and to minimize the economic cost for the users. The system takes in real time data of the water content of the plant as input value, combines it with other parameters such as water cost schedule and precipitation on the crop field, runs the designed linear optimization system periodically and outputs the most efficient amount of water the plants need, which is translated by a specific actuation time of the water pumps. The linear optimization system, is able to make decisions for the users when to distribute water into the crops fields and how much water should be delivered. Given the number of factors to be considered and the different crop requirements to take into account for each type of plant, this problem became too complex to solve through simple management methods and has to be supported by automated systems such as the one provided in this work.