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<p>This battery charging example compares direct solar battery charging vs. an MPPT algorithm combined with a buck converter.</p> <p>The solar panel model in this example allows the user to specify not only the "boilerplate" electrical characteristics (i.e. the open circuit voltage, short circuit current and peak power output capability), which are always given at the full or nominal irradiance level, but also to specify the reduced output and shift in the peak power point at lower irradiance levels. This shift in the load voltage at which peak power transfer occurs gives rise to the performance improvement that can be achieved with MPPT (maximum power point tracking) when the irradiance level varies over time.</p> <p>The "electronics" section of this design contains a few passive analog circuit elements, but consists mainly of abstract "math block" models. These are used to represent the state-average (non-switching) behavior of the converter. The sampled-data MPPT algorithm dynamically adjusts the buck duty-cycle, to keep the solar panel operating at its peak power output. The user can adjust various "tuning" parameters of that algorithm (e.g. sample rate, the duty-cycle "delta" or perturbation used for tracking, etc.). The simple algorithm is visible in the open-source "MPPT-Solar" model, just right click and select "View/Copy Model".</p> <p>The simulation results show clear improvement in both panel power output (magenta vs. light blue waveforms) and battery input or charging current (red vs. dark blue waveforms), for MPPT vs. direct charging, respectively. Also, the actual duty-cycle "hunting" or peak power tracking operation is visible in green waveform, as the irradiance level varies sinusoidally (brown waveform).</p> <p>A companion design is available, which shows a circuit implementation of the buck converter power stage. That design can be used to analyze the efficiency of the MPPT approach. Efficiency can be a key factor in the trade-off assessment vs. simple direct charging. That circuit design can be found here: https://www.systemvision.com/design/solar-energy-harvesting-implementation-mppt-battery-charging</p>

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Tags BuckState-AverageMPPTSolar Panelsolar chargerpvEnergy Harvest

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