Compact and efficient Maximum Power Point Tracking circuit for portable solar battery charger

Abstract

Abstract:In this paper, a new compact but efficient Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) circuit is added to the conventional battery charger. The battery charging is composed of two steps of the Constant Current (CC) charging and Constant Voltage (CV) charging. Unlike the conventional CC charging, the new MPPT circuit can adjust the charging current according to the sunlight intensity to deliver the largest available solar energy to the battery. For the CV, the proposed battery charger can keep its charging voltage on the full charge level thus it does not lose the battery capacity due to the undercharging. The new battery charger can deliver more power to the battery than the charger without MPPT by 98.8%. Also, the charging time can be shortened by 52.3% with 10.5% of layout overhead.

A novel analog maximum power point tracker for low‐cost and low‐power distributed PV systems

“…With their high reliability, simple and efficient analog circuits are very competitive and essential. Many research efforts have been made with various schemes for PV systems over the past decades . A few attempts have been made to develop important features, such as fast tracking under a changing environment, very simple controls, and high efficiency even in low‐power systems .…”

An improved dynamic maximum power point tracking method for PV application

“…There have been many algorithms developed for MPPT [3], e.g. perturbation and observation (P&O) method [4], the fractional open circuit voltage or short circuit current [5,6], the fuzzy logic control [7]. Basically, these methods is considered and evaluated under a fixed environmental condition including irradiance and temperature by the name of static MPPT performance.…”

Sunlight-variation-adaptive charge pump circuit with self-reconfiguration for small-scale solar energy harvesting

“…Recently many systems that can harvest energy from their environments such as wind, sun, vibration, temperature, etc are being studied [1,2,3,4,5]. Among them, solar energy is the most popular energy source due to its ubiquitous availability, high power density, and that DC voltage and current can be directly obtained from sunlight [3].…”

“…Among them, solar energy is the most popular energy source due to its ubiquitous availability, high power density, and that DC voltage and current can be directly obtained from sunlight [3]. Solar energy can be converted by inductor-based power circuit or capacitor-based charge pump.…”