The Research of Photovoltaic Street Light Control

System with MPPT

Peng Fang

Pu Wang

University of Electronic Science and Technology of China

Zhongshan Institute.
Zhongshan,China.

Chuanqing drilling engineering Co., Ltd.

Chengdu, China.

AbstractTo solve the problem of photovoltaic street light

applying, by researching the charging-recharging strategy of
battery and the conversion efficiency of photovoltaic(PV) cell, the
implementation method of solar street light control system is
presented. Three-stage battery charge strategy and variable step
size MPPT algorithm are put forward. A single chip processor
controls duty-cycle of the buck DC/DC converter to achieve
maximum power point tracking. Results of the experiment
indicated, the proposed MPPT controller can track external
conditions change fastly and accurately, the battery charge
efficiency is quite high,and the system is running steadily.

Chemical energy which transformed from the electrical energy

provided by solar cells battery. Currently PV systems are used
lead-acid batteries, including Stationary lead-acid batteries,
Industrial-type VRLA batteries and Small VRLA batteries

Keywordsphotovoltaic(PV) cell; battery; maximum power

point tracking (MPPT); charge strategy

I.

INTRODUCTION

Energy substitution has now been in a very important

position in the Energy Security Strategy of our country where
power rationing is becoming usual recently due to the shortage
of domestic energy supply and the upward price trend of global
fossil fuels. It seems to be the trend of times that the solar
energy, which is infinite and renewable, will be gradually
replacing the conventional source of energy in some part of our
everyday life and production activities. Along with the
increasing size of urban areas and the rising standard of
construction, the total number of street light of our country has
been raising at an average rate of 20% per year, of which the
energy conservation is giving the government a cause for
concern. Although the solar street light has many advantages
such as environmental protection, low power consumption, and
is expected to be the future mainstream of city illumination, its
domestic application is at a standstill at present because of the
existing bottleneck in its technology and cost.
The greatest obstacle for the application of solar street light
now mainly focuses on the following two aspects: (1) The
lead-acid battery has a short lifespan of 4 to 6 years in general,
which gives rise to high costs of maintenance and replacement.
(2) The conversion efficiency in solar cell is quite low, only
about 50%, and therefore limits its generating efficiency. By
researching and marrying the charging-recharging strategy of
battery and the maximum power point tracking (MPPT)
method, this article proposes a workable method for a MPPT &
PV power control system applying in street light.
II.

A. Factors that affect the PV batterys life

The batteries used in PV system have some different

working features when used for other purposes . They are
charged on day with electrical energy which transformed
from solar energy and supply electrical power to street light
on night. Because solar energy is a discontinuous, unstable
energy , it will inevitably impact the batteries' lifespan in
the process of charging and discharg. The following are the
main factors.
1) Long-term lack of charging:Due to randomness of
natural resources, it was difficult to recharge battery entirely
used in PV sysytem, and easily made to battery in long-term
lack of charging, it will shorten batterys life.
2) Depth of discharge:The deeper battery discharge, the
less the number of recharge cycles.
3) Overcharge and overdischarge:They will cause battery
to dry up.
4) Environmental temperature:Battery in -30 ~55
scope can work properly. If not, battery capacity fell off
remarkably, and then it shortens the service life of battery.
B. the Basic Theory of Battery Charge

In the mid-1960s last century, American scientist

Joseph A.Mas advanced the optimum battery charging
curve with lowest emitting gas. As shown in Fig.1.
Experiment results show
charging time can be
considerably reduced if the charging current changes
around this curve while battery capacity and sevice life will
not be affected.

BATTERY IN PV SYSTEM

The main function of the battery which is the key

component of PV street light control system is to store the

Figure 1. optimum battery charging curve

978-1-4244-9857-4/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

The track is similar to exponential function curve.

According to the curve, battery is charged with a current
value which can be absorbed completely by battery without
gas emitting. At any charging time t:

i = I 0 e at

(1)

I0 is maximum initial current value when t=0. a is

attenuation coefficient, is defined as battery charging
current acceptence rate. The current above the exponential
function curve cannt be used to improve charging rate but
increase emitiing gas. Conversely, the current below the
exponential function curve will increase charging time.
C. the research of charging-recharging strategy of battery

The reasonable research of charging-recharging

strategy of battery is a great help on improving service life
of PV battery. Based on the discussion of theory of battery
charge ahead, in this paper, improved three-stage charge
strategy is adopted.
1) First stage: fast charge

In order to shorten charging time, battery is charged

with big interval current in the early charging moment at
which battery can accept larger charging current. At the
beginning of charging, big constant current(0.8 C201 C20)
is acceptable to make the battery in a short period of time to
reach 60% capacity. The acceptance of battery is strongest
with constant current charging, mainly accompanied by the
endothermic reaction. With the ongoing process of charging,
polarization enhances. Temperature increases with the gas
emitting. Electrode overpotential increases and the voltage
rises. When the charge reaches about 70 to 80%, the
voltage reaches the maximum charge voltage limit, then it
turns into the constant voltage stage.
2)

float-charging voltage V f[2] , Where V 0 is the voltage

reference point, that is, the voltage not given the
temperature compensation. T is the current temperature by
detected. 25 is reference temperature, c is the voltage
temperature coefficient, here can be set to 0.0132.
Vf = V 0 (T25) c
III.

(2)

PRINCIPLE AND STRATEGY OF MAXIMUM POWER POINT

TRACKING

PV cells output voltage and current have a strong

non-linear because of the changes of sunlight intensity and
temperature. In a particular working environment there is a
unique point of maximum power output. In practical
application, in order to get as much power at the same
sunlight intensity and cell temperature, there is a problem
about maximum power point tracking. MPPT refers to
making full use of solar energy, controlling the output
voltage or current of solar array to always work on the
maximum power point.
A. Output characteristics of photovoltaic cell

The output characteristics of PV cell can be shown in

Fig.2 which shows the volt-ampere characteristics of PV
cell[3]. Photovoltaic cell is neither constant voltage source,
nor constant current source, can not afford arbitrarily large
power for the load. It is a non-linear DC power supply. Its
output current maintained at a invariable level in much
of the work voltage range. But near the open circuit voltage,
current decreases greatly.

Second stage:constant voltage charge

As the battery terminal voltage gradually increases,

the current gradually decreases. On second stage, a higher
constant voltage is provided to the battery, at the same time,
detecting the charging current, when the charging current
drops below the conversion threshold, that the battery
power is full, the charging circuit enters float-charging
stage.
3) Third stage:float-charging

Once battery gets close to the fully charged, its

internal active substances has been largely restored to its
original state, to prevent overcharging a lower than normal
charging voltage for charging is provided. Float-charging
voltage is set values according to actual requirements of the
battery. The VRLA battery of 12V, its float-charging
voltage is generally between 13.4V ~ 14.4V. In regions that
the temperature varies greatly between day and night, the
proper temperature compensation is necessary. To consider
temperature range, battery charger should give some form
of compensation based on the temperature coefficient.
Therefore, type (2) can be taken to determine the

Figure 2. Typical VI characteristic curve of PV cell

Isc
Uoc
IMPP
UMPP
PMPP

Short-circuit current of PV cell

Open circuit voltage
Maximum power point current
Maximum power point voltage
Maximum power point power

The output of PV cell depends on a variety of factors,

such as sunlight conditions, temperature, etc. In a different
environment, the output curves of PV cell are different, the
corresponding maximum power points are also different.
Maximum power points change as the sunshine and
temperature are different , each curve there exists a
maximum power point, this power point corresponds to the
only output voltage of PV cell. Therefore, if you want to
use solar energy as much as possible, maximum power
point tracking can be achieved by regulating the output

voltage of PV cell to approach the maximum power point.

B. MPPT control method

algorithm is shown in Fig.4, is a threshold value,

3>2>1.

In order to achieve maximum power point tracking of

PV cell, many kinds of implementation methods are
proposed at home and abroad. The important methods
are[4]:incremental conductance (IncCond for short) ,
curve fitting , neural network, perturbation and
observation(P&O for short) etc. Moreover, there are
multiple algorithms in each control method.
C. Improved MPPT control strategy

Perturbation and observation method can be

implemented by DC-DC converter[5]. PV cells connect to
the load via BUCK Converter as shown in Fig.3.
Controlling power converter can change the equivalent load
of PV cell, then the MPPT of system will be achieved.

Figure 3. BUCK converter for PV system connection diagram

For the ideal BUCK converter, the equivalent input

impedance is:

Rin =

uin uo 1
RL
=
2 =
2
iin
io D
D

(3)

Where D is the duty cycle of power switch, R L is the

actual load impedance.When R L in the BUCK converter
has a certain value, R in can be changed by changing D.
According to the characteristics of DC-DC converters,
impedance of the circuit can be adjusted to meet the
maximum power output requirements by changing PWM
duty cycle. That is, to change the equivalent load of PV
cells can change the operating point and output power of
PV cell. Because of the certain tracking step of traditional
perturbation and observation method, it cannot
give
consideration to both the tracking accuracy and speed
(Small step, slow response; large step, lower tracking
accuracy)[6], error judgments will be easily made in the
dramatic changes of the sunlight. As a result, a variable step
size P&O method is proposed to improve the transient
characteristics of the traditionary P&O. The open circuit
voltage U of PV cell will be detected firstly. The voltage at
the MPP is about 0.76 times the open circuit voltage, so the
open circuit voltage is multiplied by 0.76 as the initial
reference value. To control output voltage of the PV cells
from open circuit voltage moves to the MPP voltage. MPPT

Figure 4. Flow char of the variable step size P&O MPPT algorithm

IV.

SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION

A. Hardware design

Figure 5. Block diagram of photovoltaic street light control system

Michrochip PIC MCU is adopted as control center in the

system which realizes photo control and time control according
to the setting of working way. The equivalent load of solar cell
array is changed by using PWM waves which MCU outputs to
control BUCK converter. The battery charge and discharge

policies is implemented by real-time detection of battery

voltage. The working status of controller are displayed by
LCD. D1 is a diode for solar panels anti-reverse, anti-charge,it
is a fast recovery diode. C1 and C2 are filter capacitances. Q is
IRF540 NMOS FET switch. L is energy storage inductor. D2 is
freewheeling diode. Switch K2 is used to control the battery
power to the load at night. All the switches in the circuit are
non-contact FET to improve system reliability and reduce
noises.

TABLE 1. THE EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS OF CHARGING CIRCUIT WITHOUT

MPPT AND WITH MPPT
Measuring
time

Charging current

Charging

Improvement of

without

current with

charging

MPPT/A

MPPT/A

efficiency %

930

1.92

2.08

8.33

B. Software design

1030

2.26

2.45

8.41

The main task of the controller software are: the control of

PV cell charging the battery;the collection, processing and
calculation of PV cell and batterys voltage, current; to achieve
MPPT control algorithm; to implement the time settings and
display of the working status of controller. In this software,
modular programming method has been adopted, MPLAB-IDE
integrated development environment is employed for
application development. The flow chart of the main program
is shown in Fig. 6.

1130

2.14

2.31

7.94

1230

2.33

2.54

9.01

130

2.28

2.49

9.21

230

2.05

2.23

8.78

Start

The experiment shows that in the same conditions, through

the contrast of output power in photovoltaic power supply
circuit with or without MPPT, the output power of the circuit
with MPPT increases 8.61% than without MPPT. If the
situation is cloudy, the output power of solar panels can be
measured on rapid changes.

Initializtion

VI.

Time or
photo control
Open timing
control
Y

photo control

Day

Close K1

Close K2

Collecting solar cell voltage,

current and battery voltage

Collecting battery
voltage

MPPT control
algorithm

battery voltage
<13v

battery voltage
<11v

constant voltage
charge
Y

battery voltage
<13.4v
N

Float charging and

temperature
compensation

Y
Over-discharge
protection

After the research of photovoltaic battery charging strategy

and the maximum power point tracking methods, a
photovoltaic street light system with microprocessor control
has been produced. The experiments show that the strategies
about battery charge and discharge can work and the battery
can be charged fastly. The proposed MPPT method is effective
and feasible,when the external environment rapidly change, the
system can fastly track the changes by the larger step size, that
improves the dynamic performance of the system. When the
system is close to the maximum power point, a small step size
for disturbance is employed, that reduces fluctuation of power
and improves the tracking efficiency. Using MPPT not only
improves the power output of solar panels, but also improves
reliability and stability of the system.
REFERENCE

Standby delay

battery voltage
<14.4v

[1]

N
Overcharge protection

[2]

Standby delay

Figure 6. Flow char of control system main program

V.

ANALYSIS OF EXPERIMENTAL DATA

A rated current 5A circuit board without MPPT and a

circuit board with MPPT function have been developed. Select
a monocrystalline silicon solar panel with rated output voltage
17.28V, a lead-acid batteries 12V7AH to build a test platform.
In a fine day with some clouds, following data have been
measured. The experimental results are shown in Table 1.

CONCLUSION

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[4]

[5]

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