In general, solar cells properties were measured under standardized environment. Recent method uses a Solar Simulator or Sun Simulator to measure a solar cell characteristic by the condition of 1000 W/m2 irradiance and 25°C temperature. However, solar simulator is expensive, therefore in this paper we propose a simple I-V characterization method with microcontroller, potentiometer, and sensors to measure I-V characterization of solar cell. Our method used a microcontroller to record any detected current and voltage from sensors generated by the solar cell driven by halogen light on low power poly-Si solar cell. This method is limited by the sensor rated voltage and current, thus a higher power solar cell is possible to be measured with a higher rated voltage and a current sensor for the future development. The measured Voc and Isc of 3 Wp poly-Si solar cell have 1.94% difference in Voc and 49.1% difference in Isc against the standardized environment. This method is able to characterize a low power solar cell with slight difference on Voc and about half value of Isc compared to standardized I-V curve characterization due to the limitation of halogen lamp spectral irradiance.
This paper present simple and inexpensive solar charge controller (SCC) using 8-bit microcontroller ATtiny85. The SCC using a pulse width modulation (PWM) signal to transistor and MOSFET to control current that generated by the microcontroller. The battery voltage state also monitored using a series resistor paralleled to the battery and the voltage drop connected to the microcontroller. The design of SCC consists of 3 major part i.e. microcontroller, current driver, voltage sensing. The purpose of measurement is to know the characteristics of 2 charging modes, mode 1 (one) and mode 2 (two), that occur in the system created. The measured data is the battery voltage as independent variable, and the solar panel’s voltage, the current that flow towards battery and the power provided for charging. Measurements are conducted from the battery voltage state of 7.84 V to 8.4 V. The results show that the solar charge controller using 8-bit microcontroller ATtiny85 was successfully managed to provide current and voltage according to expected design with 400 mA, 8.9 V for the first charging case and 150 mA, 12 V for the second charging case.
A solar street lamp is a lamp technology that utilizes solar cell to obtain electrical energy during the daylight hour by solar radiation and then use the electrical energy to provide light at night. Semiintegrated lamp tries to overcome complicated installation and expensive price of normally solar street lamp. Semi-integrated solar street lamp only integrated solar cell, controller, and battery, while lamp is separated using cable. This configuration makes semi-integrated lamp cheaper and easier for installation that is suitable for rural area. Therefore, in this paper we develop semi-integrated type of solar street lamp. The illumination of semi-integrated lamp was measured using lux meter. The power of the lamp was calculated to meet the energy needs for 12 hours. The results show that the semi-integrated solar street lamp with low power LED ~2W has been successfully developed. The solar lamp can be automatically turned on for around 12 hours, from 5:50 PM to 5:31 AM (UTC+7). The illumination average of the lamp is 17.42 lux with 6.97 lux deviation. The measurement result of illumination shows that the solar street lamp has maximum distance of more than 140 cm with 230 cm high of lamp.
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