2012 IEEE Students’ Conference on Electrical, Electronics and Computer Science
Field Programmable Gate Arrays Control based
Photovoltaic Energy management
Mohammad Meraj Alam
Department of Electrical Engineering
IIT DELHI
New Delhi, India
Abstract—This paper presents hardware implementation of PV
module for photovoltaic (PV) applications by using buck
converter, battery, electronic card and FPGA Board. The goal of
the project was to control the chopper in order to be able to
charge a battery and feed a load with energy from that battery
and/or the solar panel, and display all the significant signals.
Therefore it was necessary to make a hardware card using
current transducers and an algorithm implementation on an
FPGA. The control algorithm and coding for integration with the
PV cell is proposed by means of the VHDL code and
implemented using Xilinx Spartan-3 from Digilent (NEXYS-2)
FPGA Board. In this work, a hardware implementation of
electronic card interface and open loop control with rotary
encoder as a reference input in a PV system has been developed.
This has all been done, and the whole project works, including
the control of the chopper and displaying the values of the
currents and voltages. It is better to control the chopper in closed
loop instead of the open loop system that we used. This way it is
possible to make sure that the solar panels works in its optimal
power point, by using an MPPT. The Developed hardware has
the merits of easy programming in VHDL with high accuracy
even with low resolution ADC which are utilized in
microcontroller and dSPACE. The proposed technique has been
described through detailed experimental work.
Keywords-Photovoltaic, XILINX, FPGA, DC/DC Buck
converter
I. INTRODUCTION
Due to day by day shortage and environmental impacts of
conventional fuels like coal, Gasoline etc. renewable energy
sources such as solar energy, wind energy are acquiring more
significance. The photovoltaic (PV) system for converting solar
energy into electricity is in general costly and is a vital way of
electricity generation only if it can produce the maximum
possible output for all weather conditions. The PV array has a
highly non linear current-voltage characteristic varying with
the irradiance and temperature that substantially affects the
array power output. The maximum power point tracking MPPT
control of the PV system is therefore critical for the success of
a PV system [1]-[3].
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated
circuit designed to be configured by the customer or designer
after manufacturing hence "field-programmable". The FPGA
configuration is generally specified using a hardware
978-1-4673-1515-9/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
Eric Escande, julie Szmigiel, Victor Wilk
ENSE3, Grenoble INP
Grenoble, France
description language (HDL). FPGAs contain programmable
logic components called "logic blocks", and a hierarchy of
reconfigurable interconnects that allow the blocks to be "wired
together"—somewhat like many (changeable) logic gates that
can be inter-wired in (many) different configurations. To define
the behavior of the FPGA, the user provides a hardware
description language (HDL) or a schematic design. The HDL
form is more suited to work with large structures because it's
possible to just specify them numerically rather than having to
draw every piece by hand. Applications of FPGAs include
digital signal processing, software-defined radio, aerospace and
defense systems, ASIC prototyping, medical imaging,
computer vision, speech recognition, cryptography, bio-
informatics, computer hardware emulation, radio astronomy,
metal detection and a growing range of other areas.
XILINX FPGA and design tools enable to produce
prototype logic designs in a short period. It is possible to
create, implement, and verify a new design. A configuration
program stored in internal static memory cells of the XILINX
FPGA is written by VHDL programming language that has
been designed and optimized for describing the behavior of
digital systems. VHDL has many features appropriate for
describing the behavior of electronic components ranging from
simple logic gates to complete microprocessors and custom
chips. Features of VHDL allow electrical aspects of circuit
behavior (such as rise and fall times of signals, delays through
gates, and functional operation) to be precisely described. The
usage of FPGAs instead of other architectures was mainly
based on four factors: the acceleration of the design or parts of
it, the flexibility of hardware reconfiguration, the reduction of
costs, and the energy consumption [3].
Several digital circuits have been proposed and used for PV
module which range from DSP [1], dSPACE, microcontroller
but Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) [2], [3] based
systems could provide a number of run-time advantages over
the sequential machines such as a microcontroller and
dSPACE. FPGAs are increasingly used in conventional high
performance computing applications where computational
kernels (Fast Fourier transform, convolution etc) are performed
on FPGA instead of on processor. FPGA implementation of
these kernels offers order of magnitude performance
improvements over microprocessors. Other benefits are in
terms of power used: a FPGA implementation of FFT or
convolution is expected to consume lesser power than a
microprocessor. Low-power usage is due to the lower "clock
rate" and literally no wasted cycles for instruction fetch/decode
as in CPUs. Moreover, with concurrent operation, it is executed
continuously and simultaneously which is faster than DSP.
Thus the FPGA has been applied for high speed switching
circuit to reduce equipment-sizing [3] especially in the
implementation.
This paper is organized as follows: Section II shows the
proposed system configuration. In section III Design of
Figure 1. The circuit model diagram of solar cell
electronic card is discussed and programming of XILINX card
(FPGA) using VHDL .The DC/DC converter and DC/AC -current we have utilized a track width of 0.32 mm. As output
inverter configuration is discussed in section IV. Experimental from the electronic card, there are six different measurements
results are shown in section V. Finally conclusions are that correspond to the voltage and the current in the 3 different
presented in section VI. blocks namely (PV, battery and load). Then these measures are
treated by the card Xilinx through the CAN and displayed in
II. PV CELL MODEL AND PROPOSED SYSTEM real time. The implementation is done in the language VHDL.
CONFIGURATION
The simplest equivalent circuit of a solar cell is a current IV. DC/DC CONVERTER CONFIGURATION
source in parallel with a diode. The output of the current source Two-stage PV energy conversion system (PV-Battery and
is directly proportional to the light falling on the cell. The diode Battery-Inverter) offers an additional degree of freedom in the
determines the characteristics of the cell. Output voltage and operation of the system when compared with the one-stage
photocurrent depends upon various factors. configuration. Clearly, it is achieved at the expense of slightly
decreasing the global efficiency of the combined system
x Temperature dependence of the diode saturation because of the connection of two cascade stages. Hence, by
current I0 including a dc-dc converter (or chopper) between the PV array
x Temperature dependence of the photo current and the inverter connected to the load, as shown in Fig. 3,
various control objectives are possible to pursue concurrently
x Series resistance Rs, which gives a more accurate with the PV system operation. The intermediate dc-dc
shape between the maximum power point and the converter is built with an Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor
open circuit voltage. (IGBT) as main power switch Tb in a standard unidirectional
The circuit diagram for the solar cell is shown in Fig. 1. Buck topology that employs an energy-storage reactor and a
The system consists of a solar array, buck converter, XILINX rectifier diode.
(FPGA) Board, Battery, inverter. The type of solar cell used is The dc-dc converter produces a chopped output voltage and
PW1650 from Photowatt (BOURGOIN-JALLIEU - France). therefore controls the average dc voltage relation between its
Its electrical characteristics can be up to 200W @ 00 C. The input and output aiming at continuously matching the
maximum electrical characteristics obtained during our characteristic of the PV system to the equivalent impedance
unrepeatable tests (clouds) are given in Table. 1. presented by the dc side of inverter. The steady-state voltage
and current relations of the Buck converter operating in
III. DESIGN OF ELECTRONIC CARD INTERFACE AND VHDL continuous current mode are given by: Vout=Vin*D
CODING
Fig. 2 illustrates a manually designed electronic card
interfaced with FPGA (Xilinx) board which aims to give output
values (for voltage and current) which are contained in a range.
Then these values are converted into discrete values to be
displayed by the Xilinx card. The duty cycle for the DC-DC
converter has also been programmed as it can be changed
manually. This means that the duty cycle is driven in open
loop.
The designed electronic card layout using the electronic
design software TCI version 4.3 where each component like
LEM-LA25NP (current transducer), AD 622 (instrumentation
amplifier), Digilent PmodAD1 (Analog to Digital Module
Converter Board with ADCS7476MSPS), have their standard
dimensions from datasheet of each components. The LEM
carries a current of 10A hence we have utilized a width of 3.82
mm for the tracks. For the voltage divider and the secondary- Figure 2. The electronic instrumentation card interfaced with XILINX card,
and through wires to PV, Battery and Buck converter

SCEECS 2012
 TABLE I
ELECTRICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PV MODULE
Rated Power (Pmax) 67W
Voltage at Pmax (Vmp) 21.07V
Current at Pmax (Imp) 3.2A
Open circuit voltage (Voc) 24.7V
Short circuit current (Isc) 5A

TABLE II
DESIGN SPECIFICATION OF BUCK CONVERTER
Input voltage (Vs) Theoretical 0V-48V
Experimental 21.07V-38.63V
Figure 4. The overall FPGA Layout
Input current (Is) Theoretical 0A-5.5A
Experimental 0A-3.2A
Output Voltage (Vo) Theoretical 12V
Experimental 11.57V-14.42V
Output current (Io) 0A-4.35A
Maximum Power output (Pmax) 52.9W
Switching frequency (f) 16.86kHz
Duty cycle (D) 0.32-0.82

Figure 5. The Experimental setup

necessary to transform the binary values to have the real values

Figure 3. Control design with converter and inverter
V. THE PROPOSED FPGA SYSTEM
A. The FPGA Layout
The whole digital design has been implemented in VHDL,
using Xilinx software, to be able to use the Spartan3 FPGA.
First, it was necessary to study the Xilinx development tool.
After that the whole project was divided into black boxes,
which also consist of different smaller black boxes. By doing
this, we could reuse subparts multiple times and reduce the
complexity of each part. We divided it into 3 big parts.
The first one is the measurement part, used to convert the
measured currents and voltages to digital signals, using an A/D
converter. The display part uses a predesigned block and a self-
made part to display these values on the small 8-digit display
on the FPGA card. Before showing them on the display, it was
in the correct units (Volts or Ampere). This coefficient depends
on the measured signal, the desired range and the accuracy.
Three switches are used to select which value is displayed.
The control part controls the chopper in open loop. But all
the necessary variables are made easily accessible in order to
make it possible to easily modify the system to a closed loop
control. The control exit signal is the duty ratio alpha or D. The
total design is presented by this scheme. At the input of the
A/D converters (output of the measurement stage) a voltage
between 0V and 3.3V is measured. The A/D converter
represents the value of this measurement in a 12-bit binary
number, so a value from 0 to 4095. To display the real value of
this representation, the coefficient is calculated between this 12
bit representation in Xilinx and the real value that will be
displayed.
B. Voltage and current sensing
For current measurement, the hardware topology uses
current transducers in the form of LEM (LA25-NP)
implemented on the electronic card which is used to convert
the quantity into current entity, then voltage entity for finally
converting into digital signal by AD622.
The output of voltage and current signals from PV panel
projected onto oscilloscope is shown in Fig. 6 with 40 Watt
lamp load. The duty cycle of DC/DC converter is adjusted to
be 0.74 while PV output voltage=21.07V and PV output
current=3.2A is obtained. The maximum power output

SCEECS 2012
Figure 6. The output voltage and output current respectively from PV at time
T1 during the day P=67.42W
from photovoltaic panel for this trial is 67.42 Watt. We can
easily notice here in Fig. 6 that the DC/AC converter doesn't
have a strictly constant current: we can see portion of 50 Hz
current from the lamp. The current is negative which means
that the battery is in charging mode.
C. The Experimental results
The results are performed in Grenoble, France. The
proposed setup has been tested at different time during the day
(T1, T2) to ensure the testing is done for different
environmental operation conditions (with and without clouds).
Fig. 6 - 8 show the performance results obtained from the
hardware setup for different time during the day, also with
different load. Fig. 6 is done for maximum power at 67.42
Watt, output voltage at lamp load=222 volts and duty cycle
0.74 where you can see that current is not exactly constant.
With small time difference Fig. 7 has been captured to show
the capability of the control with FPGA and then the load
energy is coming both from PV and battery. In Fig. 7 (also at
T2) it can be notice that Ibattery > 0 (battery is in generator
mode) (3.3W).
Figure 7. The output voltage and output current respectively from PV at time
T2 during the day P=44.05W
At t=T2 the extracted power from PV is 44.05 Watt and PV
output voltage=25.17V, PV output current=1.75 Ampere
respectively at duty cycle 0.56. At t=T2, the load (same lamp),
as in the time T1 as the same consumption power (34W).
Simultaneously we can notice in Fig. 7 that the DC/AC
converter doesn't have a strictly constant current it is due to the
fact that solar insolation is fluctuating very fast in the region
where the experiments are performed. Fig. 8 shows the PV
voltage and current waveforms in "same as possible" condition
than T3, but without lamp load of wattage capacity 40W (34W
real). The PV output voltage=27.6V, PV output current=1.3A
and maximum power 35.1W. Fig. 8 shows the output voltage
from DC/DC converter when there is no load connected and
current output from the battery. The whole solar energy is
going through the battery which is in charging mode.
SCEECS 2012
Figure 8. The output voltage and output current respectively from PV at time
T3 during the day P=35.92W
VI. CONCLUSIONS
The goal of the project was to control the chopper in order
to be able to charge a battery and feed a load with energy from
that battery and/or the solar panel, and display all the
significant signals. Therefore it was necessary to make a
hardware card and a software implementation on an FPGA.
This has all been done, and the whole project works, including
the control of the chopper and displaying the values of the
currents and voltages. It would have been better to control the
chopper in closed loop instead of the open loop system that we
used. This way it would be possible to make sure that the solar
panels works in its optimal power point, by using an MPPT.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to thank Grenoble INP, France and
Prof. Eric Escande for his support during the project.
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