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Design and implementation of maximum power point tracking solar charge

controller

Conference Paper · September 2016

DOI: 10.1109/CEEICT.2016.7873139

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Md. Rokonuzzaman Mohammed Hossam -E- Haider

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 Design and Implementation of Maximum Power
Point Tracking Solar Charge Controller
Md. Rokonuzzaman ? and Md Hossam-E-Haider β
Department of Electrical, Electronic and Communication Engineering (EECE)
Military Institute of Science and Technology (MIST), Mirpur Cantonment, Dhaka-1216
? ragib_isme@yahoo.com and β haider8400@yahoo.com

Abstract—Solar or photovoltaic (PV) system is an alternative have employed a microcontroller based MPPT technique using
clean energy resource that has received much attention in the Aurduino. It makes the system simpler, more efficient and
research and industries. Solar charge controller (CC) is the heart highly flexible. This research therefore aims at designing and
of a solar system. Three common types of charge controller are implementing a microcontroller based MPPT solar charge
ON/Off , pulse width modulation (PWM) and maximum power controller technique using Aurduino. Solar panel is the source
point tracking (MPPT). MPPT is getting very much popularity
nowadays for its high capability of power extracting from solar
of nonlinear energy. TSPV-30P solar panel and 12V lead acid
panel. This paper is presenting here an improved design of MPPT battery is used to experiment a PV system using this proposed
solar charge controller using Aurduino. The proposed technique charge controller. Electrical specification of this panel are
significantly reduce system power loss and increase the efficiency. mentioned in Table I.
Experimented highest efficiency 97.75% is recorded from the
TABLE I. E LECTRICAL S PECIFICATIONS OF TSPV-30P PANEL
proposed system. Additionally, some new features are added like
smart device charging, wireless data logging and protections from Name Rating
high voltage disconnect (HVD), low voltage disconnect (LVD),
over current protection, short circuit protection and reverse Maximum power 30W
polarity protection. Maximum voltage 17.10V
Maximum current 1.76A
Keywords—charge controller, MPPT technique, PV system, Open circuit voltage, Voc 21.16V
aurduino, microcontroller, buck converter. Short circuit current, Isc 1.94A
Operating temperature -40◦ C to +85◦ C

I. I NTRODUCTION
Table II depicted the developed specification against the
With the advancement of semiconductor physics, its ex- older version of charge controller and specific uses of the
traction process of energy has become more efficient these proposed features.
days. Particularly, perturb and observe (P&O) [1], incremen-
tal conductance (INC) [2], constant voltage (CV) [3], short TABLE II. D EVELOPED S PECIFICATIONS OF THE P ROPOSED S YSTEM
current pulse [4], fuzzy logic control (FLC) [5], [6], artificial
neural network (ANN) [7] and some other techniques [8] have Feature Model/Rating Specification
been reported to offer an efficient energy extraction process. System 30W, 12V Input source, Load
However, the efficiency of an energy extraction process can Aurduino Mega ATmega1280 Microcontroller board
further be improved considering the Current-Voltage (I-V) Current sensor ACS712–20A Protection for over cur-
characteristic of a solar cell. rent or short current flow
Buck converter — Convert panel voltage to
The I-V characteristic of a solar cell is nonlinear and battery voltage
varies with irradiation and temperature [9]. There is a unique MOSFET driver IR2104 (10V to High speed power MOS-
point on the I-V or Power-Voltage (P-V) curve of the solar 600V) FET drivers
array called Maximum power point (MPP) at which the entire Wireless Fidelity ESP8266 Data logging
PV system operates with maximum efficiency and produces (Wi-Fi) module
its maximum output power. When a PV array is directly USB connector USB 2 (480 Mbit/s) Direct charging of exter-
connected to a load, the systems operating point will be at nal devices
the intersection of the I-V curves of the PV array and load. Display DIS-00014 (20 × 4) Monitoring system sta-
However, under most conditions this operating point is not tus
at the MPP [10]. Therefore it is desirable to ensure that the
load line passes through the MPP to continuously deliver the
maximum power to the output. To achieve this maximum II. P ROPOSED S YSTEM
output power and thereby to improve the efficiency, maximum
power point tracking (MPPT) technique can be employed in Aurduino MEGA 2560 microcontroller is used to control
the PV system. the charge controller operation. This board is designed for
more complex projects or research based on ATmega2560.
Different MPPT techniques have been developed and im- Fig. 1 shows the pin-out configuration of Aurduino MEGA
plemented [11]–[13]. It is also evident that none of those 2560. It contains 54 digital input/output (I/O) pins, 16 analog

978-1-5090-2906-8/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE iCEEiCT 2016

Fig. 1. Pin-out of Aurduino MEGA 2560 [14]. Fig. 2. Block diagram of the proposed solar charge controller.

inputs, 4 hardware serial ports, 16 MHz crystal oscillator, a

power jack with universal serial bus (USB), an ICSP header
and a reset button. It also facilitates a larger space to sketch
desired design. Port A0 is used to solar voltage divider, port
A1 to output of the ACS712 current sensor, port A2 for voltage
divider of battery, A4 and A5 for liquid crystal display (LCD)
display, port D2 for transmitting data to WiFi module ESP8266
and D3 for receiving. D5 for controlling back light control of Fig. 3. Pin diagram of ACS712-20A
the display, D6 for load control, D8 and D9 to control the
MOSFET driver, and port D14-D16 is used for light emitting
diode (LED) indication.

A. Experimental Setup
Fig. 2 shows block diagram of the proposed charge con- Fig. 4. Schematic diagram of a Buck converter
troller. This block diagram is divided into three portions
namely source, control and load. 30W solar panel for source,
12V lead acid type rechargeable battery as load and a charge internet. This facility will enable remote access over the system
controller for control the both portion. Voltage sensor will to monitor.
sense the voltage and output is given to the microcontroller.
To sense current, ACS712-20A current sensor is used.
Fig. 3 shows the pin diagram of ACS712. VOUT pin of this B. Inductor Selection
sensor is connected to analog pin (A1), VCC pin connected Inductor has an important role to design any kind of
to 5V pin and GND pin to ground (GND) pin of Aurduino. converter. To design a buck converter an inductor will be used.
A buck converter circuit is used to convert panel voltage to Some parameters are assumed to calculate the inductance.
load voltage. The schematic diagram of a buck converter is
shown in Fig. 4, that is a composition of An inductor, capacitor Let,
and IRFZ44N MOSFET. When the MOSFET is ON, current
will flow the inductor, load and output capacitor. Since the Output voltage, Vout = 12 V
diode is reversed biased thus no current will flow through Input voltage, Vin = 17 V
the diode. In this state magnetic energy will store in the Panel power
inductor and electrical energy in the capacitor. When, this Output current, Iout =
Output voltage ,Vout
MOSFET is off stored energy in the inductor released and 30 W
current complete its path through the diode and in the same =
time stored energy of capacitor will supply to the load and 12 V
will control the current flow. IRFZ44N MOSFET is used for = 2.5 Amp
better and quick switching. Since it has very low amount of Switching frequency, Fs = 50 kHz
voltage drop it increases the total efficiency of the system. Vout
Liquid crystal display (LCD) with 20 × 4 character is used Duty cycle, D =
Vin
to display panel and battery voltage, load condition with pulse 12 V
width modulation (PWM). To reduce wire density in the circuit =
17 V
a I2C connector is used. It only takes four wires to interface = 0.7058
with the display and circuit. Finally a Wi-Fi module is used
to get data from the system to send a fixed server through = 71%
 Now, Inductor, L = (Vin −Vout ) × D × 1/Fs × 1/∆IL (1)

Where, ∆IL = Inductor ripple current.

A good estimation for the inductor ripple current is 20%
to 40% of the output current. Let,

∆IL = 40% of the rated current

= 40% of2.5 A
= 1.0 A

Now, from equation (1)

Fig. 5. Simulation circuit of buck converter

L = (Vin −Vout ) × D × 1/Fs × 1/∆IL
= (17 − 12) × 0.71 × 1/50, 000 × 1/1.0
= 0.071 mH
= 71.0 µH

Inductor peak current = Iout + ∆I2L

= 2.5 + 1.0/2
= 3.0 A

C. Capacitor Selection
The output of buck converter has a amount of ripple.
Capacitor is used to minimize the voltage overshoot and ripple.

∆IL
Output Capacitance, Cout = (2)
8 × Fs × ∆Vout
Fig. 6. PWM pulses from MOSFET

Where, Inductor ripple current, ∆IL = 1.0 A

used that accept low power input from the microcontroller
Switching frequency, Fs = 50 kHz and produces a high current drive input for the gate of the
Output voltage ripple, ∆Vout = 20 mV (assume) MOSFETs. Fig. 6 shows the output of MOSFETs. This pulse
width modulation (PWM) signals are represents the duty cycle.
Here, 80%-90% duty cycle is used that increased the
Now, from equation (2), efficiency of the system. For, hardware implementation an
inductor bank is used to provide proper inductance. To design
∆IL this system, desired inductor value is 250 µH.
Cout =
8 × Fs × ∆Vout
1.0 (3) IV. H ARDWARE D ESIGN AND F IELD T EST
=
8 × 50000 × 0.02
= 125 µF Fig.7 shows the experimental set up bench and circuit of
charge controller, mentioning every equipment used for the
system including solar panel, control circuit-Aurduino Mega,
D. MOSFET selection
battery, inductor bank, 3W solar light as load and a display.
IRFZ44N MOSFET is used, its volatge rating is greater
than 20% of rated voltage. Current rating is greater than 20% In addition Fig. 7 also shows the full hardware system in
of rated current. It has minimum conduction loss. testing period and zoomed LCD display. Which represent the
full status of the system. There are three columns of data.
First column shows the solar panel voltage, current and power
III. C IRCUIT S IMULATION
condition. Second column shows the battery voltage, current
Fig. 5 shows the simulation circuit diagram of the buck and charging state condition. Third column shows pulse width
converter, designed by Proteus software. Q1, Q2 and Q3 status with load on or off condition. The same status is directly
are three IRFZ44N MOSFETs. IR2104 MOSFET driver is transferable to a handset or laptop through a Wi-Fi device. This
 TABLE III. E XPERIMENTAL DATA AND E FFICIENCY OF THE P ROPOSED C HARGE C ONTROLLER

Panel Load Efficiency (%)

Time
Voltage (V) Current (A) Power (W) Voltage (V) Current (A) Power (W) Session-wise Average
8.00 AM 14.1 1.58 22.278 13.6 1.5 20.4 91.57
8.30 AM 14.3 1.8 25.74 13.8 1.63 22.49 87.38
9.00 AM 17.1 1 17.1 13.6 1.21 16.45 96.23
9.30 AM 16.8 1 16.8 13.6 1.14 15.5 92.28
10.00 AM 16 1.5 24 13.9 1.16 16.12 67.18
10.30AM 16.1 1.5 24.15 13.9 1.47 20.43 84.6
11.00 AM 16.4 1.36 22.304 13.8 1.58 21.8 97.75 91.45
11.30 AM 16.9 0.91 15.379 13.6 1.09 14.82 96.39
12.00 PM 16.5 1.29 21.285 13.8 1.5 20.7 97.25
12.30 PM 16.2 1.36 22.032 13.8 1.5 20.7 93.95
1.00 PM 13.9 1.15 15.985 14.1 1.1 15.51 97.02
1.30 PM 16.9 0.83 14.027 13.5 1 13.5 96.24

Fig. 8. Efficiency of the Charge Controller

Fig. 7. Experimental Setup Bench.

monitoring with data storage, external device charging and

will enable an advantage to maintain or observe the system
from any place connected with internet.
V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
Experimental data of proposed solar charge controller are
showing in the Table. III. Which are represents the experi-
mented data of voltage, current and power both of the panel
and load. From this tested value the overall efficiency of the
charge controller is determined. It’s more than 90%. Fig. 8
shows the overall efficiency of the proposed charge controller.
In the beginning of the day, At 8.00 AM, panel power and
load power was 22.278W and 20.4W respectively. It is also
observed that in the same time panel voltage and current
was 14.1V and 1.58A respectively. In that time experimented
efficiency was 91.57%. At 11.00 AM, the highest efficiency,
97.75% is recorded where in the lowest efficiency was 67.18%
at 10.00 AM. Field test shows that the average efficiency of
the proposed charge controller is 91.45%.
VI. C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper a MPPT charge controller has been designed
and tested. The proposed system demonstrate its low cost,
low power consumption, microcontroller based control unit
and high power efficiency. Microcontroller based alternative
was chosen since it permits easy and customized system
modifications. The proposed system also facilitates remote
continuous system status displaying. Abide by maximum stan-
dard of Infrastructure Development Company Limited (ID-
COL), Bangladesh, Experimental results from a 30W prototype
system have been presented and validate. Tests show that
the average efficiency of the charge controller is 91.45%,
which is fully satisfying the regulations of Technical Standard
Committee (TSC) of IDCOL. Furthermore it can be coupled
with more than one renewable source and interfaced to power
grid through an inverter.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work has been supported by Research and Devel-
opment (R&D) fund of Military Institute of Science and
Technology (MIST), Mirpur Cantonment, Dhaka-1216.
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