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available on the market. It is important to choose a solar There are several advantages of using lead acid battery:
panel which is able to meet the objectives and goals of this • Maintenance free: Unlike using flooded lead acid, this
project. For the selection of solar panel, we look at the three type of battery does not need to be filled with water to
important factors which are: work.
x Cost • Environment friendly: Literally, this is no emission of
x Open Circuit Voltage harmfully gases since the gases produced are been
x Size absorbed by the battery itself which means it can be
used anyway and does not require special ventilation
Cost process.
Of the three different types of solar panel (i.e. mono- • Spillage free: It is termed ‘sealed’ since we are unable
crystalline, poly-crystalline, and amorphous), mono- to gain access to the electrolytes stored inside the
crystalline is most expensive but has the highest efficiency. battery which also means there is ease of installation
Poly-crystalline is less expensive but its efficiency is lower rendering it ideal for portable design. The chance of
than mono-crystalline. Amorphous type is least expensive getting acidic burns is also eliminated when
but in terms of efficiency, it is also the lowest. So to get the compared to using flooded lead acid type.
best of both worlds, poly-crystalline type solar panel was
selected for this project.
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stealing some emitter current away from Q1. Since the x Finally, outputs from the collectors of power transistors
collector current Q1 follows the emitter current, this will (Q7, Q8) are connected to the primary side of a centre tap
cause a lower voltage drop across R4 which reduces the transformer which would then step up the 12V voltage to
Vsg of p-MOSFET M1, thus turning it off. 230V AC supply.
x Capacitor C2 is needed for providing frequency The circuit was simulated with Circuit Lab. As could be
compensation which prevents the amplifier from seen in Fig. 7, the outputs from Q1 and Q2 produce a value
oscillating. of 30.96mA as displayed on ammeter AM1 and AM2. After
x Transistor Q3 acts as a reverse battery protection which going through the Darlington driver stage, the current is
does nothing unless the battery is connected in the wrong amplified to 342.5mA as displayed on ammeter AM3 and
polarity. When this happens, Q3 will turn on and reduces AM4. The two 2N3055 power transistors further amplify the
the reference input voltage to zero which turns off current to 22.48A (as displayed on ammeter AM5 and AM6)
transistor Q1 and p-MOSFET M1and prevents the battery which is required by the transformer to step up the required
from damaged. AC voltage from 12V to 230V.
x D1 is a red light emitting diode which turns on to indicate C. Voltage Regulator
the solar panel is in active mode and ready to charge the
battery. The input voltage supplied from the 12V battery is not
x D4 is a green light emitting diode which turns on to stable enough for the charging of mobile phones. We need a
indicate the battery has reached a certain amount of DC-DC step down voltage regulator to regulate a constant
voltage. It can be pre-set by adjusting the value of voltage of 5V to render it suitable for charging. There are
potentiometer R9 which we can set it to around 14V to two types of regulator which is linear regulator and
indicate the battery is fully charged. switching regulator. After considering the advantages of
switching regulator over linear regulator, the chosen
B. Inverter regulator is based on integrated circuit (IC) LM2575 chip.
Since we are designing the portable power supply for This IC chip requires only 3 additional external components
home and outdoor use, we need a design that is neither too (inductor, diode and capacitor) to work, and the output
expensive nor too complex. After much consideration, we produced is very stable. Fig. 8 shows the circuit diagram of
decided to implement a square wave inverter since it is not the voltage regulator [9].
too complex to design, cheap and able to operate resistive
loads like light bulbs therefore making it suitable for simple
home and outdoor usage. Fig. 7 shows the circuit diagram of
the inverter [8].
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Operation of the battery level indicator: After adjusting the potentiometer R9 (Fig. 6) on the charge
x The Zener diode D6 forms the voltage reference. controller, a 14.6V was obtained as shown in Fig. 12.
x Variable resistor VR1 and resistors (R2, R3, R4, R10)
will be used to set the various fixed voltage levels as
required.
x Resistors (R11, R12) form a voltage divider which
reduces the battery voltage by a factor of 3.
x IC LM339 chip is a comparator that compares the voltage
difference between the voltage divider and different
voltage levels formed by the resistors [10].
Figure 12. Calibration of the charge controller – 14,6 Volt
x The open collector output from the comparator functions
like a switch to turn ‘ON’ the LEDs (D1-D5)
accordingly. After sunlight was intentionally blocked, a 12.3V was
Simulation results show that when the battery is at a obtained at the output (Fig. 13) which means that the output
voltage of greater than 12V, all the LEDs will light up. When voltage is dependent on the amount of light. In order for the
the voltage of the battery drops to ~10.8V, only 3 LEDs are charge controller to function properly, sunlight must be
lit up as shown in Fig. 10. Once the battery is less than 9V, directed on the solar panel without blockage.
only the red LED will light up, and this means that it is time
to charge the battery prior to further operation.
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Next, the inverter was tested with a 230V 25W filament The voltage regulator is able to charge a Samsung S3
bulb and it was able to power up successfully. The output mobile phone connected to it as shown in Fig. 20.
value of the square wave inverter drops to a value of 195V
(Fig. 16) as the bulb consumes high wattage when operating.
Figure16. Inverter operating a filament bulb The charging process draws a constant current of 0.08A
which is around 80 mA as shown in Fig. 21. Although the
The inverter was then tested with a 230V 5W fluorescent charging current is quite small as compared to USB
and it was able to power on successfully with an output AC charging on normal desktop, a smaller charging current will
voltage of 236V as shown in Fig. 17. The voltage drop is prolong the lifespan of the rechargeable battery.
lesser due to the reduction in the wattage of load.
Figure 19. Output voltage produced by the voltage regulator Figure 23. Current drawn by the battery indicator circuit
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V. SYSTEM INTEGRATION
All the circuits, i.e. charge controller, inverter, voltage
regulator and battery level indicator, were installed on a
storage box as shown in Fig. 24.
Figure 26. Testing of the portable solar power supply end product
VI. CONCLUSION
A portable solar power supply was successfully built to
the specification. The product is able to support
simultaneous operation of low-power rated electrical
appliances and charging of mobile phones. The product
makes use of a 17V solar panel to capture the sunlight and
convert it to electrical energy. A charge controller is in place
Figure 24. Installation of circuits in a toolbox to regulate the charging process of the 12V rechargeable
battery. A low cost square wave inverter was built to
In order to dissipate heat generated from the circuits generate a 230V AC power supply from the 12V battery. To
more efficiently, two small fans were installed in the box in support the charging of handheld devices such as
addition to a heat sink as shown in Fig. 23. Few tiny holes smartphones and tablets, a voltage regulator was
were drilled along the rear top edge of the box to allow any implemented to step down the 12V battery voltage level to a
hot air to dissipate to the surrounding atmosphere. regulated 5V. The final product features a 3-pin power
socket to provide a 230V 50W AC supply, and a USB port to
The exterior of the storage box features a 3-pin power
provide regulated 5V DC 1W power supply.
socket to provide 230V AC supply, an USB port to provide
5V DC power supply, LED lights for battery level indicator ACKNOWLEDGMENT
and operational status indicators, and switches for turning
The authors would like to express gratitude and
on/off part of circuits for power savings. A solar panel is appreciation to School of Science & Technology, SIM
mounted on top of the box as shown in Fig. 25. University for the provision of budget and support of this
project.
REFERENCES
[1] Armin Aberie, “Silicon Solar Cells,” SERIS, National University of
Singapore, April 2009.
[2] ETAP, “Photovoltaic Array Fundamentals”. URL:
http://etap.com/renewable-energy/photovoltaic-101.htm
[3] Tahsina Hossain Loba & Khosru M. Salim, “Design and
Implementation of a Micro-Inverter for Single PV Panel based Solar
Home System,” 2013 International Conference on Informatics,
Electronics and Vision (ICIEV 2013).
[4] Michael Boxwell, “Solar Electricity Handbook,” Greenstream
Publishing, 2013 Edition.
[5] Multicomp MC-SP5.0-GCS Solar Panel Datasheet.
[6] Wikipedia, “VRLA Battery (valve-regulated lead-acid battery)”.
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRLA_battery
[7] Electroschematics.com, “12V LDO Solar Charge Controller”. URL:
Figure 25. Exterior view of the portable solar power supply end product
http://www.electroschematics.com/6899/12v-ldo-solar-charge-
control/
Fig. 26 shows the end product of the portable solar power [8] Electroschematics.com, “12 Volt Inverter for Soldering Iron”. URL:
supply powering up a fluorescent bulb and charging a http://www.electroschematics.com/3542/12-volt-inverter-for-
Samsung Galaxy mobile phone at the same time. This shows soldering-iron/
that the portable solar power supply has met its intended [9] Texas Instrumens LM2575 Datasheet,
objective and is capable of operating some low power rated “LM1575/LM2575/LM2575HV Simple Switcher® 1A Step-Down
appliances. The end product carries a weight of 5.5kg which Voltage Regulator”.
is reasonably portable. It could serve as a versatile backup [10] Texas Instrumens LM339 Datasheet,
power source in times of emergency. “LM139/LM239/LM339/LM2901/LM3302 Low Power Low Offset
Voltage Quad Comparators”.
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