1 / 7

CUER Electrical System

CUER Electrical System. MPPTs. Solar Cell characteristics. Photovoltaic Cells have a non-linear IV curve, like the one shown below The curve shifts depending upon environmental conditions, eg: temperature, incident light intensity.

lefty
Download Presentation

CUER Electrical System

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. CUER Electrical System MPPTs

  2. Solar Cell characteristics • Photovoltaic Cells have a non-linear IV curve, like the one shown below • The curve shifts depending upon environmental conditions, eg: temperature, incident light intensity. • The PV curve has a characteristic “Maximum power point (MPP)”. P MPP V

  3. Maximum Power Point Trackers • Endeavour’s solar array is split into 4 discrete “modules”, each with an output of roughly 40V. The battery system is over 100V, so the maximum power point tracker (MPPT) acts as a boost converter to step up the voltage. MPPT High voltage battery 140V Solar Module ~40V

  4. Maximum Power Point Trackers • But an MPPT must do more than simply boost the output of the solar module. • The module should always be operated at the MPP. • The MPP varies depending on environmental conditions, so it must be actively tracked

  5. Maximum Power Point Trackers • One common method of maximum power point tracking is “perturb and observe”. • The MPPT periodically perturbs the operating point, observes the output, and decides which direction to perturb the voltage in next time. • This way the tracker is constantly hunting for the maximum power using a closed-loop algorithm.

  6. CUER’s MPPTs • CUER uses Drivetek MPPTs. These originate from a Biel University project, and are designed specifically for solar car use. • Efficiency is excellent, typically >95% under good sunlight (see below)

  7. CUER’s MPPTs • The switching circuit is a boost converter with “Active Snubber Circuit”. This works to practically eliminate switching losses by only switching the MOSFETs at zero current/zero voltage

More Related