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Novel Solar-Cell Power Supply System Using a Multiple-Input DCDC Converter

Kimiyoshi Kobayashi, Hirofumi Matsuo, Fellow, IEEE, and Yutaka Sekine
AbstractRecently, the clean electric power generation systems have attracted a great deal of social attention to exploit the clean-energy resources such as solar arrays, wind generators, fuel cells, and so forth. In this case, a multiple-input dcdc converter is useful to combine the several input power sources and to supply the regulated output voltage for the load from the power sources. The novel solar-cell power supply system using the buckboost-type two-input dcdc converter is proposed, in which a solar array and a commercial ac line are employed as power sources and are combined by two input windings of the energy-storage reactor. Also, its operation principle and performance characteristics are discussed. Furthermore, the solar-cell optimum-operating-point tracker is proposed and examined. It is conrmed by the experiment that the proposed solar-cell power supply system has excellent performance characteristics. Index TermsDCDC converter, multiple-input, optimum operating, phase shift, solar array.

Usually, the solar-cell optimum-operating-point tracker is often employed to exploit more effectively the solar array as an electric power source and to obtain the maximum electric power [2], [3], [5][7] at all times even when the light intensity and the environmental temperature of the solar array are varied. In the solar-array system of a large power capacity, the optimum operating point is determined by computing the feed power of the solar-array power supply with a microcomputer. However, in small-power-capacity systems, such a microcomputer cannot be used because of the reduction in size and the improvement of the performance cost of the controller. For this reason, a new optimum-operating-point tracker of the solar array is proposed, in which inexpensive p-n-junction diodes are used to generate the reference voltage of the operating point of the solar array and the comparatively high degree of the solar-array optimum point tracking performance is obtained. II. M AIN P OWER C IRCUIT C ONFIGURATION AND P HASE -S HIFT O PERATION A. Main Circuit Conguration Fig. 1 shows the circuit conguration of the novel solarcell power supply system using the buckboost-type two-input dcdc converter. The input side is divided into two main blocks; one is solar-array block referred to as CONV.1 and the other is the commercial-ac-line power-source block referred to as CONV.2. CONV.1 consists of a solar-cell module, an inverse current blocking diode D1 , a voltage smoothing capacitor, the main power switch S1 , and one input winding of the energystorage reactor T. CONV.2 consists of a commercial-ac-line voltage source bridge rectier, a power factor corrector (PFC), main power switch S2 , and another input winding of T. The output side is composed of one output winding of T, a rectier, a voltage smoothing capacitor, and a load. This proposed solar-cell power supply may be used in the optical ber telecommunication system and has the following features. 1) Two main power switches S1 and S2 are driven alternately in a phase difference of 180 to realize the soft-switching operation of these two switches and to increase the power efciency of the power supply system. 2) The soft-switching operations, i.e., the partial resonant operations of S1 and S2 , are employed to decrease the switching power loss and to suppress the electromagnetic interference (EMI) noise. 3) The input current harmonics of the commercial ac line is suppressed by the PFC circuit.

I. I NTRODUCTION N RECENT years, environmental problems have attracted great attention on a worldwide scale. Therefore, the exploitation of clean-energy resources such as solar arrays, wind generators, full cells, and so forth has been concretely attempted in industrial elds. In the communication eld, outdoor-installed-type systems have been widely used. In the future, it is necessarily required to use these systems in combination with the solar-cell power supply for the construction of energy-saving and clean-energy systems. From the viewpoint mentioned above, this paper proposes the new buckboost-type two-input dcdc converter, in which a solar array and a commercial ac line are exploited as two input power sources and are combined by two input windings of the energy-storage reactor [1], [4]. Also, the phase-shift operation of the main power switches in two input circuits has been adopted so that these main power switches are driven alternately in a phase difference of 180 to realize the softswitching operation of these switches and to increase the power efciency of the power supply system.

Manuscript received February 5, 2004; revised July 19, 2005. Abstract published on the Internet November 25, 2005. K. Kobayashi is with the Graduate School of Science and Technology, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki 852-8521, Japan, and also with the Shindengen Electric Manufacturing Company, Ltd., Saitama 357-8285, Japan. H. Matsuo is with the Graduate School of Science and Technology, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki 852-8521, Japan (e-mail: h-matsuo@net.Nagasaki-u. ac.jp). Y. Sekine is with the Shindengen Electric Manufacturing Company, Ltd., Saitama 357-8285, Japan. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TIE.2005.862250

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Fig. 1. Circuit conguration of the novel solar-cell power supply system using the buckboost-type two-input dcdc converter.

4) The new maximum-power tracker of the solar array is also proposed, in which the temperature compensation is easily realized using the voltage drop of the cascadeconnected diodes as its reference voltage. When the light intensity is relatively high, the output power is mainly sent from CONV.1. The input power from CONV.2 compensates the shortage in the input power from CONV.1 when the output power is larger than the input power from CONV.1. In this case, the solar array can operate at the maximum-power point by using the input power from the commercial ac line. Furthermore, when the input power cannot be sent from CONV.1 at night, the output power is fed from CONV.2. Therefore, the output power is stably provided for the load. B. Phase-Shift Operation When the two main switches S1 , and S2 are driven, the signal timing shown in Fig. 2 is usually used. That is, the total on-time interval TON in Fig. 2(a) is divided into the on-time intervals TON1 of S1 and TON2 of S2 . TON1 is controlled to track the optimum operating point in CONV.1 and TON2 is controlled to regulate the output voltage. There is no pause time between TON1 and TON2 in the signal timing of Fig. 2(a). Therefore, the soft-switching operation of S2 cannot be realized. In order to secure the soft-switching operation of S2 , the signal timing shown in Fig. 2(b) is adopted in this paper. In this case, S1 and S2 are driven alternately in phase difference of 180 . The phase-shift control circuit, the equivalent circuit, and its timing chart are shown in Fig. 3(a)(c), respectively. In case TON = TON1 or TON = 0, S1 in CONV.1 is usually driven by the selecting signal (Select Sig.) in the next cycle. C. Experimental Results of the Main Circuit The specications of the two-input dcdc converter used for the experiment are as follows: input 2442 V dc in CONV.1; 90110 V ac in CONV.2;

Fig. 2. (a) Signal timing of the continuous operation type. (b) Signal timing of the discontinuous operation type.

output 48 V/1 A; rated output voltage: 51.3 V; output current range: 0 to 1 A; output over-current: 103% or more. Fig. 4 shows the observed waveforms of the drain to source voltages Vds1 of S1 and Vds2 of S2 and drain currents Ids1 of S1 and Ids2 of S2 , which correspond to Fig. 2(b). In Fig. 4(a), both main switches S1 in CONV.1 and S2 in CONV.2 are

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Fig. 4. Observed waveforms of the drain-source voltages Vds1 and Vds2 and switch currents Ids1 and Ids2 . (a) Phase-shift operation, output: 51.2 V/1 A. (b) Single operation of CONV.2, output: 51.2 V/1 A. (c) Single operation of CONV.1, output: 51.4 V/0.15 A.

Fig. 3. Phase-shift operation. (a) Control circuit conguration. (b) Equivalent circuit of Fig. 3(a). (c) Timing chart.

driven alternately in a phase difference of 180 , and the output power is sent from both CONV.1 and CONV.2. As a matter of course, the optimum operating point of the solar array is tracked. In Fig. 4(b), only S2 in CONV.2 is driven and the output power is sent from CONV.2 only. This situation appears at night and in the rainy day. In Fig. 4(c), the output power is relatively small. In this case, only S1 in CONV.1 is driven and the output power is sent from CONV.1 only. Furthermore, two main power switches in the two-input circuit are driven in a phase difference of 180 . Because of this phase-shift operation and the discontinuous current mode of Ids1 and Ids2 , the softswitching operation of the main power switches can be achieved as shown in Fig. 4(a). Fig. 5 shows the regulation characteristics of the output voltage Vo and the power efciency versus load current

Fig. 5. Output voltage Vo and efciency for the change of the load current Io .

Io characteristics. There is no deteriorated problem such as the output variation or the instability in the neighborhood of the changing-over point of Io1 = 0.25 A, in which the circuit

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Fig. 6. Control circuit conguration of the two-input dcdc converter and the solar-cell optimum-operating-point-tracker system.

Fig. 7. Relative output characteristics of the solar-array open voltage and reference voltage.

operations as shown in Fig. 4(a) and (c) are changed over. It is seen in Fig. 5 that the regulation characteristic is excellent and that a high power efciency of 85% is obtained at the rated output power. III. O PTIMUM -O PERATING -P OINT T RACKING OF A S OLAR C ELL A. Solar-Cell Operating-Point Tracking System Fig. 6 shows the control circuit conguration of the two-input dcdc converter and the solar-cell optimum-operating-pointtracking system. The forward voltage drop of the p-n-junction diode is used as a reference voltage to track the optimum operating voltage of the solar array even when the light intensity and/or the environmental temperature vary. It may be important to note that since the voltage versus current characteristics of the solar cell and the p-n junction are very similar, the forward voltage drop of the diodes is used as a reference voltage. In the maximum-power tracker in Fig. 6, the input voltage VR of the pulsewidth modulator #1 is represented as follows: VR = K2 (VS Vref ) = K2 (VS K1 Vd )

Fig. 7 shows the relationship between the open voltage Vso of the solar array and the reference voltage Vref generated by the p-n-junction diode, in which the surface temperature is varied. The voltage is normalized by the voltage value of 39.5 V, which is the open voltage of the solar array at the temperature of 25 C. The voltage value at the optimum operating point of the solar array is about 75% of the open voltage Vso of the solar array and corresponds approximately to Vref in Fig. 7.

B. Experimental Results of the Tracking Performance Fig. 8(a) shows the solar-array power Ps and the voltage Vs at the optimum operating points for the solar-array current Is , in which the surface temperature of the solar array is 40 C. Fig. 8(b) shows the solar-array voltage Vs and the output voltage Vo of the two-input dcdc converter for the load current Io , in which the surface temperature of the solar array is 40 C. It is seen in Fig. 8(a) and (b) that the voltage Vop and the current at the optimum operating point of the solar array are 28.0 V and 0.44 A, respectively; the observed operating voltage of the solar array is 28.7 V (Vsv ), the load current Io at the changed-over point between the phase-shift operation as shown in Fig. 4(a) and the single operation of CONV.1 as shown in Fig. 4(c) is 0.19 A, and the satisfactory regulation characteristics of Vo is realized even when the operation mode is changed over. The current value of 0.44 A at the optimum operating point of the solar array is obtained by using two solar-array modules of NT 121 (Sharp Corporation Ltd.). Fig. 9(a) and (b) shows the characteristic at the surface temperature of 80 C, which corresponds to Fig. 8(a) and (b), respectively. In this case, the voltage and the current at the optimum operating point of the solar array are 24 V and 0.44 A. Also, the observed operating voltage of the solar array is 24.5 V (Vsv ). In Figs. 8 and 9, it is seen that the optimum operating point of the solar array can be tracked even when the surface temperature of the solar array is changed from 40 to 80 C. The detection error voltage of the proposed optimum-operating-pointtracking system is within 2.5%, and the detection error power is estimated to be negligibly small by considering the gentle slope in the neighborhood of the maximum-power point as shown in Figs. 8(a) and 9(a).

(1)

where VS is the output voltage of the solar array, Vref is the reference voltage of VS , Vd is the forward voltage drop of the p-n-junction diodes, and K1 and K2 are the gains of the ampliers #A and #B, respectively. The on-time interval TON1 of S1 is controlled to reduce the VR by the pulsewidth modulator #1 and the maximum-power point of the solar array is tracked. Also, the total on-time interval TON of S1 and S2 is controlled by the pulsewidth modulator #2. Inputting TON and TON1 into the phase-shift circuit shown in Fig. 3(a), the ontime interval TON2 of S2 is generated. As a matter of course, TON2 is controlled to regulate the output voltage Vo against the variations of the load current, the operating voltage Vs of the solar array, and the ac input voltage of the commercial ac line.

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Fig. 8. (a) Solar-array output power characteristics. (b) Solar-array voltage characteristics during operation of the dcdc converter. Fig. 9. (a) Solar-array output power characteristics. (b) Solar-array voltage characteristics during operation of the dcdc converter.

IV. C ONCLUSION In order to exploit the clean energy in the optical ber telecommunication system, the novel solar-cell power supply equipment using the buckboost-type twoinput dcdc converter is proposed, in which the solar array and the commercial ac line are employed as power sources and are combined by two input windings of the energy-storage reactor. The following statements are obtained. 1) The buckboost-type two-input dcdc converter has been developed. Two main power switches in the two input circuits are driven alternately in a phase difference of 180 C. Owing to this phase-shift operation, the softswitching operation of the main power switches can be performed. Consequently, a high power efciency of 85% is obtained. 2) A simple and inexpensive optimum-operating-point tracker has been developed, in which the forward voltage drop of the p-n-junction diodes is used as a reference voltage to track the optimum operating voltage. The detection error voltage of the proposed optimum operating tracker of the solar array is within 2.5%, and the detection error power is estimated to be negligibly small. The phase-shift operation of the main power switches is also applicable to the forward-type multiple-input dcdc converter, and it will be reported in a separate paper. Also, the PFC circuit in this paper is a new type, and a power factor of 0.85 is obtained. This PFC circuit will be discussed in detail in the near future.

R EFERENCES
[1] H. Matsuo, T. Shigemizu, F. Kurokawa, and N. Watanabe, Characteristics of the multiple-input dcdc converter, in Proc. IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conf. (PESC), Seattle, WA, Jun. 1993, pp. 115120. [2] H. Matsuo and F. Kurokawa, Solar cell power supply system using bidirectional dcdc converter, in Proc. IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conf. (PESC), Cambridge, MA, Jun. 1982, pp. 1419. [3] , New solar cell power supply system using a boost type bidirectional dcdc converter, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. IE-31, no. 1, pp. 5155, Feb. 1984. [4] W. Lin, H. Matsuo, and Y. Ishizuka, Performance characteristics of buckboost type two-input dcdc converter with an active voltage clamp, IEICE Tech. Rep., vol. 102, no. 567, pp. 713, Jan. 2003. [5] N. Mutoh, T. Matsuo, K. Okada, and M. Sakai, Prediction-data-based maximum-power-tracking method for photovoltaic power generation systems, in Proc. 33rd IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conf. (PESC), Cairns, Australia, 2002, vol. 3, pp. 14891494.

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[6] G. R. Walker and P. C. Sernia, Cascaded dcdc converter connection of photovoltaic modules, in Proc. 33rd IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conf. (PESC), Cairns, Australia, 2002, vol. 1, pp. 2429. [7] T. Shimizu, M. Hirakata, T. Kamezawa, and H. Watanabe, Generation control circuit for photovoltaic modules, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 293300, Mar. 2001.

Yutaka Sekine received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Tokyo Denki University in 1968. Since 1972, he has been with the Shindengen Electric Manufacturing Company, Ltd., Saitama, Japan. His research interest is dispersion-type switching dcdc converters for telecommunication.

Kimiyoshi Kobayashi received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from the Tokyo Polytechnic University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1986. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree at the Graduate School of Science and Technology, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan. Since 1986, he has been with the Shindengen Electric Manufacturing Company, Ltd., Saitama, Japan. His research interest is dispersion-type switching dcdc converters for telecommunication.

Hirofumi Matsuo (SM88F00) received the B.E. degree from the University of Osaka Prefecture, Sakai-shi, Japan, in 1969, and the M.E. and Dr.Eng. degrees from Kyushu University, Fukuokashi, Japan, in 1971 and 1977, respectively, all in electronics. Since 1977, he has been with Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan. Currently, he is a Professor in the Graduate School of Science and Technology, Nagasaki University. His research and educational interests are power electronic circuits such as switching converters, inverters, and active lters, and intelligent electronic circuits, highspeed digital signal processing, digital control, and dispersive power generation systems that employ solar arrays, fuel cells, etc. Dr. Matsuo served the Institute of Electronics, Information, Communication Engineers (IEICE) of Japan as the Chairman of the Committees of the Power Supplies for Electronics and Communications System in 1997 and of the Energy Electronics for Electronics and Communications System in 1998, and as an Administrative Committee Member of the International Power Electronics Science and Research in IEICE of Japan. He established the 173rd Cooperation Committee of Electronics and Communications Switching Power Supply Systems for Next Era Between Industry and the Academics in the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 2001, in which, currently, he is the Organizer and Chairman of the System Research Department. He served the Illuminating Engineering Institute (IEI) of Japan as the Chairman of the Investigation Committees on the Input Current Harmonics in the Electronic Ballasts for Lighting Systems from July 1996 to May 1998 and on the Saving Energy and Resource for Lighting Systems from June 2001 to May 2004. He received the Ohm Technical Award from the Electrical Science and Technology Encouragement Society in Japan in 2000. He is a Member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan, the IEI Senior of Japan, the Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers of Japan, the Magnetic Society of Japan, and the past IEEE Power Electronics Society Administrative Committee.