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Design of a constant current solar charge controller with microcontroller

based soft switching buck converter for solar home lighting system

Conference Paper · December 2012

DOI: 10.1109/PEDES.2012.6484337

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 2012 IEEE International Conference on Power Electronics, Drives and Energy Systems
December16-19, 2012, Bengaluru, India

Design of a Constant Current Solar Charge

Controller with Microcontroller based Soft
Switching Buck Converter for Solar Home
Lighting System
A.S.Werulkar1 P.S.Kulkarni2
1
Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Department of Electrical Engineering, Visvesvaraya
Engineering, St.Vincent Pallotti College of Engineering and National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, India
Technology, Gavsi Manapur, Wardha road, pskulkarni@eee.vnit.ac.in
Nagpur,440027,India.
ashutoshwerulkar@gmail.com

Abstract— This paper describes the design of a solar charge
controller with microcontroller based soft switching buck
converter. Zero current switching technique is used for buck
converter design. Atmega 16 microcontroller is used for
generating the necessary PWM switching signal. The output
voltage of the solar panel is reduced to 15 V and it is applied to a
charge controller circuit. The overcharge protection and under
charge alarm is available in the charge controller circuit. The
settings of these protection circuits are adjustable through
potentiometers. Win AVR software is used as a compiler for the
generation of necessary hex file.12V, 45 Ah lead acid battery is
used for charging purpose.
Keywords—AVR microcontroller, Charge controller, Lead acid
battery, ZCS buck converter, Under over Voltage protection
NOMENCLATURE
I ph Light generated Current in A
Is Output Current in A
Vs Output voltage in V
Q Carrier charge (1.6 × 10 c )
−19
become commercially available which includes solar water
pumping and solar PV power plant etc.
Microcontroller based charge controller has been explained
by Masheleni in [1].Low cost charge collector using dynamic
DC to DC topology is explained in [2].Here Dynamic Buck
and Boost Converter is used while designing the low cost
charge collector. In [3], intelligent MPP converter is covered
using microcontroller. A high efficiency Buck converter is
explained in [4] by Y.Chun Chuang. He and Y.Lung Ke also
proposed high efficiency battery charger in [5]. A synchronous
buck converter is proposed by S. Pattnaik et.al in [6]. Optimum
Buck Converter with a Single Switch is explained in [7] by
Divakar. Making use of single switch reduces the complexity
of the control and switching circuit. In [8] performance
analysis of the microcontroller based charge controller is done.
In [9] soft switching buck converter is designed using
microcontroller.
II. DESIGN OF BUCK CONVERTER TYPE CONSTANT
CURRENT TYPE SOLAR CHARGE CONTROLLER FOR SOLAR HOME
LIGHTING SYSTEM.

Fig.1 shows the block diagram used for designing the buck
Rs Series resistance of Solar Cell in Ω converter type solar charge controller. As shown in this block,
Rsh Parallel resistance of Solar Cell in Ω two panels of 37Wp and 75Wp are used in parallel

I0 Reverse saturation current of the equivalent diode in

A
I. INTRODUCTION
Energy is the basic requirement for the economic
development of any country. Energy sector of Indian economy-
agricultural, industry, transport, commercial, and domestic
needs-inputs of energy. The Ministry of New and Renewable
Energy Govt. of India has been implementing comprehensive
programs for the development and utilization of various
renewable energy sources in the country. As a result of efforts
made during the past quarter century, a number of PV
technologies and devices have been developed and have Fig.1: Block Diagram of Solar Charge Controller using ZCS Buck Converter.

978-1-4673-4508-8/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE

The output of the Solar Panels is 112W/17.5V which is
applied to ZCS Buck Converter. The PWM signal required for
the ZCS buck converter is generated from AVR Atmega16
microcontroller. This signal is applied to TLP 250 MOSFET
driver and later on it is given to ZCS buck converter. The
output of Buck converter is 15V DC. This output is applied to
Constant current charge controller and a lead acid battery of
12V, 45Ah is charged through it.
The complete system is divided into three parts,

A. Simulation of 37Wp Solar Panels in series and

parallel connection using PSpice 9.1 software
B. Design of ZCS Buck converter using microcontroller
Atmega16 and
C. Design of Constant current charge controller using
discrete components.
Fig. 4:-P-V characteristcis of two numbers of 37Wp solar panels connected
in series using PSpice 9.1 software
A. Simulation of 37Wp Solar Panels in series and parallel
connection
Fig.2 shows the equivalent Circuit of a Solar Cell. Equation
(1) describes the behavior of a Solar Cell in mathematical form.

Fig. 2:-Equivalent Circuit of the Solar Cell

⎧ ⎡ q(V + RS I s ) ⎤ ⎫ Vs + RS I s Fig. 5:-I-V characteristcis of two numbers of 37Wp solar panels connected
I s = I ph − I 0 ⎨exp⎢ s ⎥ −1⎬ − (1) in parallel suing PSpice 9.1 software

⎩ ⎣ nKTK ⎦ ⎭ Rsh
Figures 3 and 4 show I-V and P-V characteristics of two
numbers of 37Wp Solar panels in series for different solar
radiations and figures 5 and 6 show the same in Parallel
connection using PSpice 9.1 software

Fig. 6:-P-V characteristcis of two numbers of 37Wp solar panels connected

in parallel using PSpice 9.1 software

B. Zero Current Switching Buck Converter

Fig. 3:-I-V characteristcis of two numbers of 37Wp solar panels connected
in series using PSpice 9.1 software Fig.7 shows the circuit diagram of ZCS buck Converter. Fig 8
shows its simplified diagram with various parameters of
voltage and current marked on it. The ZCS buck converter Taking higher value, Maximum Output Current = 15A.
circuit consists of a main switch and an auxiliary switch along
The equivalent output impedance, =
with a resonant inductor and capacitor. At the output side,
there is an L-C low pass filter. Vo 15
= = 1Ω , Q=1, (2)
I o 15
Hence characteristic Impedance,
Ro
Zo = = 1Ω , (3)
Q
Assume the normalized switching frequency, f ns = 0.7
The necessary resonant frequency is derived from
f s 16 KHz
fo = = = 22.85KHz (4)
f ns 0.7
Resonant Angular Frequency,
1
Fig.7:-Circuit diagram of ZCS Buck Converter
ω0 = = 143.57 ×10 3 rad / s (5)
Lr × C r
Resonant Inductor is,
1
Lr = Z 0 ω0 = = 6.96 μH
143.57 × 10 3 rad / s
(6)
Resonant Capacitor is,
1 1
Cr = = = 6.96 μF
ω 0 × Z 0 143.57 × 10 3 rad / s
(7)
Fig. 8:-Simplied diagram of ZCS Buck Converter To limit charging current ripple and the output voltage
ripple ,the circuit parameters for the low pass filter of the
Fig.9 shows theoretical waveforms of various parameters. ZCS battery charger are set as follows,
As shown in the waveforms, the main switch and auxiliary
switch follow the Zero Current switching condition with L0 = 100 × Lr = 696μH (8)
zero power loss during switching. C0 = 100 × C r = 696 μF (9)
The calculated circuit parameters are as follows in Table I

TABLE I. CIRCUIT PARAMETERS

Solar panel
37 + 75 = 112W p
Input Voltage, Vi 17.5V
Switch Frequency, fs 16kHz
Resonant Frequency, f0 22.85kHz
Output voltage, V0 15V
Fig.9:-Theoretical Waveforms of ZCS Buck Converter
Resonant inductor, Lr 6.96 μH
The designed components values are calculated as follows, Resonant Capacitor, C r 6.96 μF
Assume Input Voltage from Solar Panel at MPP=17.5V
(approx.), Filter Inductor, L0 696 μH
Output voltage required for battery charging=15V (approx), Filter Capacitor, C0 696 μF
Assume Switching Frequency, f s = 16kHz Main switch MOSFET IRF 250
Capacity of Solar Panels= 37Wp + 75W p = 112W p Auxiliary switch MOSFET IRF 250
112
Maximum Charging Current = = 10 A( Approx.)
12
 Fig.12:-Gate Switching signals Vg (Main Switch) and signals (Auxiliary
Resonant Switch) Vga

Fig.10.Circuit diagram of the Solar charge Controller

Fig. 10 shows the circuit diagram of Solar charge Controller

with ZCS Buck Converter. Fig. 11 shows the MOSFET driver
circuit with TLP 250.
Fig.13:-Data of Gate Switching signals Vg (Main Switch) and signals
(Auxiliary Resonant Switch) Vga

Fig.11:- MOSFET driver circuit using TLP 250

Figures 12 to 20 show experimental waveforms of different

parameters of ZCS buck converter on Caddo 9100 Make DSO.
For generating the current waveforms, a 1 Ω resistor was
Fig.14.Current across Resonant Inductor (ILr)
connected in series of the required component and the voltage
waveform was generated across it to get the current waveform.
In fig. 13, the DSO current probe setting was used with a
multiplier of 100, hence it is showing the voltage level above
100V. This voltage should be divided by 100 to get actual
voltage levels.

Fig.15.Data of Current across Resonant Inductor (ILr)

Fig.16.Voltage across freewheeling diode (VDm)

Fig.20.Data of Current across freewheeling diode (IDm)

C. Constant Current Charge Controller

Fig. 21 shows the simulated circuit diagram of the constant
current Charge controller which is connected at the output of
ZCS buck converter. Multisim 10.0 is used for simulation of
Constant Current Charge Controller. Potentiometer R4 is used
for setting the overcharge voltage setting and potentiometer R3
is used for undercharge alarm. Potentiometer R14 is used to set
the charging current of the battery. Optocoupler IC MCT-2E
Fig.17.Data of Voltage across freewheeling diode (VDm)
controls the switching of the MOSFET IRF 540 to start the
charging of the battery 12V, 45Ah. The various levels of the
voltages set using potentiometers are also shown in Fig.21.

Fig.18.Voltage across Resonant capacitor (Vcr)

Fig.21.Constant Current Charge Controller with charging control levels set

using potentiometers

Fig. 22 shows the curve of efficiency Vs output power for

Fig.19.Current across freewheeling diode (IDm)
ZCS Buck Converter under varying load conditions. A
Rheostat of 200Ω/ 15A is used as a load for getting the results.
Fig. 23 shows charging efficiency of 12V, 45Ah lead acid
battery.
 [6] S. Pattnaik, A. K. Panda, and K. Mahapatra"Efficiency Improvement of
Synchronous Buck Converter by Passive Auxiliary Circuit" IEEE
Transaction on Industrial Applications, November/December 2010 Vol.
46, NO. 6,
[7] B. P. Divakar and Danny Sutanto" Optimum Buck Converter with a
Single Switch" IEEE Transaction on power Electronics, July 1999.
Vol.14, No.4,
[8] A.S.Werulkar and P.S.Kulkarni,”Analysis of Microcontroller based
Solar Charge Controller for Solar Home Lighting System”. Proceedings
of International Conference on Advances in Energy Research (ICAER-
2011) IIT, Bombay, India, December 9-11, 2011.
[9] R.S.Sable,A.S.Werulkar and P.S.Kulkarni,” Microcontroller Based Soft
Fig.22.Efficiency Vs Output power
Switching Buck Converter for Solar Home Lighting System” Proceeding
of National Conference on Emerging Technologies, Renewable Energy
& Electrical Engineering, ITM, Bhilwara,India"ETREEE – 2012
February 25-26, 2012, pp 166-173.

Fig.23.Charging efficiency

III. CONCLUSIONS
The Solar charge controller is designed using ZCS buck
converter topology. In this topology, it is ensured that PWM
generation through microcontroller ATmega16 will be
controlled depending upon solar radiation, intensity and
temperature. Future work is aimed at implementing modified
perturb and observe method in the Solar Charge Controller for
Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) control.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are thankful to the Management authorities of
St. Vincent Pallotti College of Engg. And Technology, Nagpur,
Maharashtra, INDIA and Visveswaraya National Institute of
Technology, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India for providing the
facilities to carry out the research work in the laboratories.

REFERENCES
[1] H.Masheleni and X.F. Carelse, “Microcontroller-Based Charge
Controller for Stand-Alone Photovoltaic System”, IEEE Transactions on
Solar Energy, 1997 vol.61, No.4, pp. 225-230,.
[2] X. Long, R. Liao and J. Zhou1 “Low-cost charge collector of
photovoltaic power conditioning system based dynamic DC/DC
topology” IET Renew. Power Gener., 2011, Vol. 5, Iss. 2, pp. 167–174.
[3] Siwakoti, Y.Prasad, Bhupendra Bimal Chhetri, Brijesh Adhikary and
Diwakar Bista, "Microcontroller Based Intelligent DC-DC Converter to
Track Maximum Power Point for Solar Photovoltaic Module”, IEEE
conference, 2010 pp 94-101
[4] Y.Chun Chuang, “High-Efficiency ZCS Buck Converter for
Rechargeable Batteries”, IEEE Transaction of Industrial Electronics,
July 2010,Vol. 57, No. 7,.
[5] Y. Chuang and Y.Lung Ke, "A Novel High- Efficiency Battery
Charger with a Buck Zero-Voltage-Switching Resonant Converter"
IEEE Transaction on energy conversion, December 2007,Vol.22, No. 4,

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