A three-phase induction motor (IM) is widely used in SPV array fed water pumping for irrigation and domestic purposes due to its suitability for applications in contaminated and isolated areas, low cost, reliability and low maintenance requirement [3-4]. A DC motor is also used in [5-7], but owing to a high maintenance requirement caused by the presence of brushes and commutator, it is not preferred for water pumping. However, a complicated control of IM and high efficiency of a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) than an IM has motivated the researchers to employ a PMSM drive where a high power submersible water pumping system is installed [8-10]. Some attempts in the area of SPV array fed water pumping using a synchronous reluctance motor (SyRM) have been made in the literature [11-12]. It has been observed that the SyRM can run satisfactory for a limited range of solar insolation level. Likewise, a switched reluctance motor (SRM) has also not received much attention for SPV array fed water pumping till now, probably due to a very high torque ripple and acoustic
noise problem associated with this drive [13]. In [14-15], the SRM is employed in SPV array based water pumping system and satisfactory operation even under the dynamic condition is claimed. Because of numbers of benefits of a permanent magnet brushless DC (BLDC) motor drive such as high efficiency, long life, high reliability, low radio frequency interference and noise and no maintenance [16], various researchers are focusing on this drive for SPV array based water pumping and so opted in this work. A BLDC motor is employed to drive the water pump based on SPV array in [1719], which manifests its suitability for water pumping.