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Solar Charge Controller (SCC) with Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) is needed to extract maximum energy from photovoltaic. However, a SCC device with MPPT technology feature is expensive on the market due to the requirements for a high-power system. On the other hand, in lower power applications such as IoT sensors, solar street lights, and wireless communication nodes, these types of controllers can be produced at a lower cost. In this study, the design of a low-cost SCC was conducted using the MPPT technology for low-power solar applications. The SCC is designed based on the Arduino microcontroller, which has the role of controlling the circuit and producing PWM signals to regulate the DC-DC converter. Several tests were conducted to validate the efficiency of the MPPT algorithm. The SCC device succeeded in increasing efficiency up to 52% on the low irradiance level.

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We report for the first time a simple optimization of triple-junction solar cell nc-Si:H/a-Si:H/a-SiGe:H using computer modeling and Robust Design. Firstly we performed a computer modeling of solar cell by wxAMPS software. Subsequently, we investigated the parameters of the solar cell layers and the effect of the solar cell efficiency using Robust Design via Taguchi method, ANOVA and additive model. The results show that the a-Si:H middle absorber cell has the highest contribution of solar cell efficiency at 40.87% and the nc-Si:H n-back layer cell has the second highest contribution of solar cell efficiency at 31.15%. Moreover, the optimum condition for triple-junction solar cell is A2 B1 C2 D2 with solar cell efficiency at 15.73%. These results indicate that Robust Design succeeded predicting the best condition for optimizing triple-junction solar cell nc-Si:H/a-Si:H/a-SiGe:H.