An efficient and intelligent solar charge controller: Design and prototyping

Demand for alternative energy sources has increased incredibly due to the energy crisis in Pakistan. Photo voltaic system is one of the best solutions to cope with this crisis. Battery is a component of primary importance in these applications specifically in solar systems and it requires robust and efficient charging. This paper presents the design of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) based solar charge controller that prevents battery from damage. It controls flow of charges to the battery and the load such that scenarios like battery over charging, under charging and over voltages are avoided while providing power to the load. It also prevents the system from abnormal conditions such as over-current. The proposed system also displays state of battery on a LCD with two LEDs indicating the position of the system. Furthermore, a data acquisition system is also built to view state of the system on a computer. Results collected from the in-house fabricated prototype demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed system