Water pumping system by The meeco Group supplies cattle farm with water
meeco América Latina, the subsidiary of the swiss-based meeco Group in Paraguay has finalized two new sun2flowTM installations in the region of Alto Paraguay. The sun2flowTM water pumping system reliably ensures water supply in remote areas, where a power source is either not available at all, exists but has frequent power outages, or would mean very high costs if it were to be distributed to such geographically isolated locations.
The general purpose of the solar powered water pumping system sun2flowTM is to provide reliable power for irrigation and watering purposes. In a recent project the sun2flowTM was mounted to the ground but sun2flowTM is also available as mobile solution and can thus provide solar power anywhere on the globe – also in remote areas.
“Until not so long ago, having water available in remote areas for irrigation or cattle needs without any kind of access to the grid was a painful and expensive process. Still today many farmers use a diesel generator to operate their water pumping systems”, explains Dieter Trutschler, Sales Director of The meeco Group. “The meeco Group has therefore developed sun2flowTM, the ideal solution to pump water in off-grid areas. Its operational principle is to connect photovoltaic modules to a water pumping technology and thus allow for real time and in-situ operation of the pump.”
Dr. Oliver Jann, Director of meeco America Latina S.A. explains the latest installations: “We have finalized the installation of two sun2flowTM systems on a cattle farm 70 kilometers north of Filadelfia in the province of Alto Paraguay, Chaco. Both systems are meant to pump water into reservoirs, whose role is to distribute water for cattle needs at the farm. Since one of the reservoirs is 11 meters high, it required us to install extra solar power capacity, reaching 940 Wp to efficiently power the pump. This installation pumps up to 11 cubic meters per hour and consequently keeps the reservoirs always filled. The amount of water stored in the cistern is sufficient to cover the needs of a 1000 cattle heads. The client has also connected the system to a fishpond, which now also benefits from a substantially better water circulation.”
The second sun2flowTM installation is there to guarantee that the 8-meter water tank level is sufficient at any given time of the day. For this system, 470 Wp of solar modules have been mounted. „It pumps up to 5 cubic meters per hour and ensures the water supply for more than 400 heads of cattle“, Dr. Oliver Jann adds. „The recent sun2flowTM installations have replaced two wind turbines and a diesel-powered pump. The advantages of the sun2flowTM over the wind turbines are cheaper initial investment and installation costs, higher pumping performance values as well as significantly lower operating costs.”
The sun2flowTM systems installed in this most recent case are the ideal solution for small-to- middle-scale cattle farms, equipped only with a reduced number of water reservoirs. For bigger cattle farms with more water tanks, the mobile sun2flowTM version is the appropriate solution as it can also power water pumps with a bigger capacity, can be transported to the various reservoirs in use and can be used to also power other appliances, e.g. domestic appliances.
