Main Project

Maximum Power Point Tracking Solar Charger

Guide:Ms.Cuckoo Joy








Submitted By
Ajmal.T.K(6)
Giridhar.V.P(29)
AkhilVijayan(64)
SanalKumar.V(69)
MuhammedAmeen(70)
Introduction

To Develop a Microcontroller based dedicated MPPT controller for solar PV
module based on the incremental conductance method. As people are much
concerned with the fossil fuel exhaustion and the environmental problems caused by
the conventional power generation, renewable energy sources and among them
photovoltaic panels and wind-generators are now widely used. So Solar Energy is a
good choice for electric power generation. The solar energy is directly converted into
electrical energy by solar photovoltaic module. Photovoltaic sources are used today
in many applications such as battery charging, water pumping, home power supply,
swimming-pool heating systems, satellite power systems etc. They have the
advantage of being maintenance and pollution-free but their installation cost is high
and inmost applications, they require a power conditioner (dc/dc or dc/ac
converter) for load interface. Since PV modules still have relatively low conversion
efficiency, the overall system cost can be reduced using high efficiency power
conditioners which, in addition, are designed to extract the maximum possible power
from the PV module.

A typical characteristic curve of the called current (I) and voltage (V) curve and
power (W) and voltage (V) curve of the module is shown below.




Maximum Power Point Tracking.

The efficiency of a solar cell is very low. In order to increase the efficiency, methods
are to be undertaken to match the source and load properly. One such method is the
Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT). This is a technique used to obtain the
maximum possible power from a varying source. In photovoltaic systems the I-V
curve is non-linear, thereby making it difficult to be used to power a certain load.
This is done by utilizing a boost converter whose duty cycle is varied by using amppt
algorithm. Few of the many algorithms are listed below.

A boost converter is used on the load side and a solar panel is used to power this
converter.
Manual tracking is notpossible so automatic tracking is preferred to manual tracking.
An automatic tracking can beperformed by utilizing various algorithms.

Direct Methods:-
a. Perturb and observe
b. Incremental Conductance

Indirect Methods:-
c. Voltage Based Maximum Power Tracking
d. Current Based Maximum power Tracking

a. Perturb and Observe method
This method is the most common. In this method very less number of sensors
are utilized. The operating voltage is sampled and the algorithm changes the
operating voltage in the required direction and samples / . If /is positive,
then the algorithm increases the voltage value towards this, and continued until the
algorithm finally moves until /is negative. This iteration reaches the MPP. This
algorithm is not suitable when the variation in the solar irradiation is high. The
voltage never actually reaches an exact value but perturbs around the maximum
power point (MPP).
b. Incremental Conductance method
This method uses the PV array's incremental conductance /to compute
the sign of /. When /is equal and opposite to the value of I/V (where
/=0) the algorithm knows that the maximum power point is reached and thus it
terminates and returns the corresponding value of operating voltage for MPP. This
method track rapidly changing irradiation conditions more accurately than P&O
method.One complexity in this method is that it requires many sensors to operate
and hence is economically less effective.



Block Diagram




Battery