In many remote and rural areas,hand pumps or diesel driven pumps are used for water supply. Diesel pumps consume fossil fuel,affects environment, needs more maintenance, and are less reliable. Photovoltaic powered water pumps have received considerable attention recently due to major developments in the field of solar cell materials and power electronic systems technology. This thesis presents a detailed study of photovoltaic water pumping systems. Each component in the system is studied separately and stands on its types and design approaches. After this through study of these parts, the best one from each of them is chosen to achieve a simple and efficient system. Then a complete modeling and simulation for the whole system is done using the commercial software MATLAB.