Comparison of a ferrite based single, three-phase spoke and surface permanent magnet BLDC motor for a PV submersible water pump

Photovoltaic (PV) powered submersible water pumps are the need of the hour for the remote rural areas. Permanent magnet brushless dc (PM BLDC) motor is a suitable candidate for this application, since it offers high efficiency. However, the cost of rare-earth permanent magnets is high which pave the way for the use of low-cost ferrite magnets. The motivation behind this paper is to asses the design feasibility to develop a low-cost BLDC motor for PV submersible pump. Hence, 2D-FEM aided analysis of single, three phase spoke (ST) and surface mounted (SM) BLDC motor is carried out and the results of the comparison are presented. In addition, the design aspects of single phase ST and SM BLDC motor with tapered and asymmetric pole shoe design for the 100 mm bore-well PV based submersible BLDC motor water pumps are also presented.