Irrigating Africa with Sunflower Solar Irrigation

In sub-Saharan Africa, access to irrigation is a major limit in agriculture. Only 7% of the total cultivated area of 183 million hectares in Africa is irrigated compared to 41% in Asia. This is by far the lowest proportion of irrigation anywhere in the world.

There are about 500 million one-acre farmers around the world and about half of them are in Africa. Crop production in Africa is rain-fed and since rainfall has become very unpredictable due to climate change, farm productivity is on decline as small scale farmers cannot afford the labour intensive manual irrigation or the expensive fuel powered irrigation pumps.

Irrigating crops on demand leads to more reliable harvests. It also gives farmers the opportunity to grow and sell crops out of season, bringing huge economic benefits to the farmers, their families and the wider community.

To help alleviate this problem in Africa, Future Pump Ltd, has developed a low-cost solar-powered irrigation pump called the SUNFLOWER. Future pump is on a mission to design, develop and manufacture robust solar irrigation products for small scale farmers around the world.

The Sunflower solar irrigation pump is both robust and portable. It offers smallholder farmers a cheaper, cleaner and more sustainable alternative to costly and polluting petrol or diesel pumps.

Details about “The Sunflower”:
•    Pumps up to 12,000 litres/day of irrigation water and can lift water over 10m.
•    Performance: 900 litres/hr at 6m, or 2,000 litres/hr at 1m.
•    Portable design with durability & maintenance in mind
•    Manual backup.
•    Detachable 80 Wp solar panel for security.
•    Works great with storage tanks and drip systems.
•    Robust hardwearing design.
•    No fuel or electricity costs.
•    Farmer-fixable (similar complexity to a bicycle).

HOW IT WORKS

The SUNFLOWER has three main parts: the PV panel, an 80W solar panel to convert sunlight into electrical energy; the motor, a specially designed DC motor to use the electrical energy to turn the flywheel; and the pump, a reciprocal piston pump to draw water out of a well, river or lake.

TECHNICAL PERFORMANCE

The SUNFLOWER can lift over 12,000 litres of water a day, with best performance at low pumping heads, and slower flow rates with increasing head. A manual switch allows for pumping early in the morning and late in the day. Designed for shallow and surface water pumping the SUNFLOWER is ideal for retrieving lake and river water.

The pump is efficient at both sucking and discharging across the head range; therefore, performance is not compromised by the position of the pump along the length of pipe. The SUNFLOWER is intended for farm-wide irrigation and is able to pump over 100m with minimal loss of flow. This makes it ideally suited to pumping into elevated storage tanks or directly into drip irrigation systems.