In this paper, novel control and power management strategies based on the fuzzy logic of an autonomous PV/battery system suitable to water pumping applications is proposed and experimentally validated. The PV panel provides the steady-state energy demand according to the climatic conditions and the battery ensures the energy balance at the load level (PMDC motor unit). The system includes two converters, a unidirectional DC-DC converter, and a bidirectional DC-DC converter, which are used as intermediaries between the DC bus, the PV, and the battery respectively. The maximum power extraction (MPP) is ensured via a feed-forward neural network-based MPPT, generating the appropriate duty cycle for the primary converter. The power management system and the control strategy allow the generation of reference currents within the limits of the battery's state of charge. Experimental studies on a prototype system have been performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.