Solar power for artesian wells with dispatch

An energy-independent well: the village keeps water even during a blackout. A turnkey complex for a well with a Rozhnovsky water tower — a solar power plant, lithium batteries, a soft starter or variable-frequency drive, and the VodoZir dispatch unit of our own design, all in a single insulated vandal-resistant cabinet manufactured by LK Energy. When the grid goes down, the pump automatically switches to solar and batteries, the tower holds a water reserve — the village never notices the outage. On ordinary days the complex simply pays off: the pump runs on solar by day, electricity bills drop, and the operator sees every site from a phone. For municipal (hromada) water utilities and farmers with their own wells.

Sound familiar?

A blackout — and the village is left without water until someone hauls in and starts a generator. Electricity is one of the largest items in the cost of water, and the tariff for businesses keeps rising. Whether the pump runs or not, you find out when people call to say there is no water. Every month someone drives around all the towers to copy meter readings. And the well itself sits unattended in a field: an opened cabinet or a cut cable is also a «we find out later».

If at least three of these are about your operation, read on.

The insight: a Rozhnovsky tower is a free battery

The tower is a 15/25/50 m³ tank on a 10–18 m support. That height is enough to distribute water by gravity at ~1.0–1.8 bar — no pump needed for delivery. This is exactly what decouples the pump’s schedule from the consumption schedule: the pump can run when it is profitable (by day, on solar), while the village draws water when it needs to (morning and evening).

For wells with a typical total head of 80–100 m, every cubic metre in the tank equals ≈0.4–0.5 kWh of electricity already «stored» as lifted water (at a lower head the figure is proportionally smaller — we account for this in the calculation). A 25 m³ tank holds 10–12 kWh, a 50 m³ tank 20–23 kWh of a «virtual battery». A lithium battery of that capacity costs real money, while the tower already stands and was paid for long ago. We merely add a «brain» (dispatch) and a «source» (solar) — this is what we call «digitalising the tower».

Night-time water draw in a village is usually 10–20% of the daily total (per our site statistics), so a tank filled in the evening carries the village through the night without a single kilowatt from the grid: solar pumps by day — the tower holds the night. For larger villages we verify tank adequacy by calculation.

An honest note: the tower stores water (and the un-purchased night kilowatt-hours for the pump), not electricity. It will not power the houses — only the continuity of water supply.

Blackout protection: water stays even when the grid is gone

Water is critical infrastructure. When the grid disappears after shelling or a fault, a village without water is not an «inconvenience» but an emergency. So the complex’s main job is to stop a blackout from reaching the tap. The protection tiers switch on automatically, with no human input:

1. Sun. By day the pump runs on solar — it does not need the grid.
2. Batteries. Without sun the pump switches to lithium — capacity sized for at least 4 hours of its operation.
3. Tower. Even when the pump is off, the village draws water by gravity until the tank empties — that is more hours of reserve.
4. Diesel genset (if present on site) starts last — only when sun, batteries and the tank reserve are all exhausted.

When the link drops, VodoZir keeps controlling the pump autonomously, and the operator sees on the panel that the site has gone to backup — learning about a blackout at the well before the first resident calls.

Why diesel is last: at June 2026 prices (diesel ≈84–87 UAH/l) the fuel component alone of a genset kilowatt-hour is about 25–26 UAH at 0.3 l/kWh on a well-loaded unit. A small pump on a typical 10–16 kVA genset runs at part load and burns 0.4–0.6 l/kWh — then the kilowatt-hour gets 1.5–2× more expensive. With maintenance and depreciation — from ~30 UAH upward. Every hour on solar, batteries and the tank reserve is unburned fuel, saved engine life and zero manual starts.

The honest limit: water-supply autonomy = a sunny day + batteries + the tank reserve, then the genset. The complex will not cover multi-day winter cloud cover without a genset indefinitely, and we do not promise that.

A finished product: the well’s entire power system in one box

We install a finished product on the well, not a «list of equipment». In a single insulated vandal-resistant cabinet of LK Energy’s own manufacture:

• hybrid inverter — works from solar, grid and batteries;
• lithium batteries (LiFePO4) — capacity sized for at least 4 hours of autonomous pump operation;
• soft starter (pumps up to 11 kW inclusive) or variable-frequency drive (above 11 kW or where pressure must be regulated);
• VodoZir dispatch unit of LK Energy’s own design;
• 50 mm sandwich panel, thermostatically controlled heating, ventilation, sensors, tamper alarm.

Heating is not comfort but a functional requirement: lithium batteries must not be charged below 0 °C, and the BMS blocks charging in frost. An uninsulated box in winter — exactly when blackouts are most likely — means a battery with no charge and zero reserve. The cabinet keeps the batteries within their operating temperature window: in hard frost the heater draws on the order of 1–2 kWh per day — against 16–44 kWh of battery capacity; this is accounted for when sizing capacity. In summer the ventilation keeps the lithium from overheating.

We build the cabinets ourselves: 20+ years in electrical installation (since 2005), 11 years of in-house switchgear manufacturing, 3000+ units produced since 2015. More — equipment manufacturing.

Why a soft starter is not optional

The figures: a direct start of a submersible pump is an inrush current 5–7× the rated value. A soft starter limits it to roughly 2.5–3× rated — no lower, or the pump will not break away under head. A hybrid inverter briefly holds 2–3× rated — so a softened start fits its capability only when the inverter is sized with a margin for the specific pump’s inrush. That sizing is part of the complex’s calculation. In a blackout the inverter must start the pump on its own, without the grid, so the pair «soft starter + a properly sized inverter» (and above 11 kW — a VFD) is not an option but a condition for the whole backup cascade to work. Bonus: smooth ramp-up and stop remove water hammer in old rural networks and protect the most expensive component — the submersible pump, whose replacement means lifting the pipe string, a crane and days of downtime.

When we use a variable-frequency drive

Above 11 kW even a softened inrush is too large — a VFD spins the pump up from low frequency within the rated current, so there is barely a «start» event at all. The second reason is stable pressure where the pump feeds not only the tower but directly into the network. The third is dry-run protection: the pump can be «throttled» to the well’s yield. What a VFD does not do — «save 30–50% of electricity»: in a well the static head dominates, so the classic savings from reducing speed do not apply here. The savings come from solar and from aligning the schedules.

How VodoZir dispatch works

The VodoZir unit collects from the site the electricity meter and water flow-meter readings, the tank level and/or running hours, and the pump’s status and faults. What this gives:

1. Readings remotely. Routine drives around the towers just to copy numbers are no longer needed (scheduled equipment inspections are of course not cancelled).
2. Faults as a notification, not a call from people. Pump on but no flow — a supply failure or break. Level dropping with the pump running — a major leak. Dry run. Cabinet opened. The operator finds out first. If the link drops, the unit keeps controlling the pump autonomously on the last schedule.
3. Schedule-based pump control. Draw statistics build a typical daily consumption profile for the village. The controller plans how much water to lift per day and places the pump’s operation within the solar-generation window, topping up the tank before the evening peak. If the level falls to the emergency threshold, the pump turns on regardless of the sun.

Aligning the generation curve with the draw curve gives extra savings — where the operating regime allows: a site without storage or control self-consumes ~50–60% of its solar generation, while the «batteries + dispatch schedule» pairing raises the share to a calculated 75–85%. The difference between these figures is the money the complex’s «brain» returns.

A related line for water utilities — pumping-station dispatch.

Scale of savings: a calculation for five sizes

Below are examples with open assumptions, not a guarantee. Every figure is derived from formulas and recalculated for the specific site.

Assumptions: generation — PVGIS (European Commission, JRC) for Odesa, fixed mount 35°, losses 14%: 1,278 kWh/kWp per year (matching the actual output of real Odesa-region plants — 1,260–1,310); consumption — actual annual well data; tariff — month-by-month from actual business invoices on voltage class 2 (2026): from ~11 UAH/kWh incl. VAT in summer to ~14 UAH in winter; for VAT payers we count savings at the VAT-exclusive tariff (÷1.2); useful energy — a month-by-month balance of generation and consumption accounting for batteries and the dispatch schedule; surplus generation is not sold.

Each complex’s batteries are sized for at least 4 hours of the specific well’s pump operation. From March to October consumption is fully covered by solar; in November–February the grid tops up the difference. The cabinet’s own consumption (controller, winter heating) of ~300–500 kWh/yr is not deducted in the table — it is accounted for in a detailed feasibility study.

Month-by-month view: a 30 kW plant at a large water intake

For a water intake consuming ~32,800 kWh per year (a pump in the 11–15 kW class) we install a 30 kW solar plant. The month-by-month generation profile — PVGIS for Odesa, fixed mount 35°, losses 14%, 1,278 kWh/kWp per year:

Solar covers ≈91% of this intake’s annual demand. The PV is sized with a margin — part of the spring–summer surplus stays unused; from November to February generation is below demand and the grid tops up the difference.

Savings: ≈297,000 UAH per year (month-by-month calculation — each solar-covered kWh × that month’s tariff; for a VAT payer).

Estimated payback of such a complex — 5–6 years: about 5 years allowing for electricity-tariff growth, up to 6 at a flat tariff. After that — 20+ years of service with minimal grid consumption.

The kit’s price depends on pump power, battery capacity and the start configuration, so we do not publish «prices from…»: we calculate the estimate and exact payback free of charge on your tower’s data.

Tariffs and prices as of June 2026: Market Operator day-ahead indices, NEURC transmission and distribution tariffs, actual DSO invoices, retail diesel price monitoring. Updated on material market changes.

Financing for communities

Solar at a water intake fits the criteria of active programmes (list as of June 2026; eligibility is checked at the application stage):

• SFRD — state support for community regional-development projects, applications via the DREAM platform, local co-financing from 10%.
• NEFCO — municipal energy-efficiency and water-supply modernisation programmes; there are precedents of utility upgrades with on-site solar.
• EIB (Ukraine Water Recovery) — long-term concessional loans for large water-supply projects: a package of dozens of a community’s or district’s wells.
• Grant programmes — donor projects such as «Solar Aid» install solar on critical infrastructure, including water utilities.

A separate market mechanism is the ESCO (energy-service contract): an investor funds the complex and the customer pays from the savings achieved. We do not provide such contracts — we work as a contractor and the kit’s manufacturer. But we prepare the technical part (calculations, specifications, monthly balances) for any financing model the community chooses.

Frequently asked questions

Will there be water during a blackout?

Yes, within the cascade: by day the pump runs on solar, then on batteries (sized for 4 hours of pump operation), and a diesel genset starts last if one is present on the tower. Plus the water reserve in the tower itself: the village has water even when the pump is off. The complex will not cover multi-day winter cloud cover without a genset — that is the honest limit.

How much does a solar complex for a well with dispatch cost?

It depends on pump power (which sets the inverter, PV size and battery capacity) and the configuration — soft starter or VFD. So instead of «prices from…» we run a free calculation on the specific tower’s data.

Can the complex be installed on an existing well without replacing the pump?

Yes. The complex connects to the existing submersible pump: up to 11 kW inclusive we fit a soft starter, above 11 kW or where pressure control is needed — a variable-frequency drive. The working pump does not need replacing.

What about winter, when there is little sun?

In winter generation is only a few percent of the annual figure, and the pump runs mainly from the grid. That is exactly why we present an annual calculation with open assumptions. The cabinet’s heating keeps the batteries within their charging window — the reserve for a winter blackout is preserved.

We already have level-based automation. Why dispatch?

A float switch turns the pump on but will not report a supply failure, a major leak or a cabinet opening, and will not read the meters. And crucially, it will not place the pump’s operation within the solar-generation window. The extra savings from aligning the schedules is precisely VodoZir’s function.

Are there financing programmes for communities?

Yes: SFRD (via DREAM), NEFCO programmes for municipal water supply, EIB concessional loans for large package projects, and grant programmes for critical infrastructure.

Where to start

We offer a demonstration or a pilot deployment on a single site: you choose one tower — we run the same formulas on its data, install the complex, and you show the community council the result in live figures. Get in touch — LK Energy, Odesa.