Design of boat powered photovoltaic systems

The solar energy has high potential applications in Indonesia since the country is located close to\ud the equatorial region that makes the sun is almost bright along the day. In this paper, the boat power photo \ud voltaic system is proposed. Such design may promote new innovations technically and economically in water\ud transportation system since the country demography is almost 75% surrounded by water. The electricity\ud energy is harvested from the sun through the PV panel then stored in the battery by solar charge control mech \ud anism in order to rotate the prime mover of the boat by means the DC motor. The shaft of the DC motor is\ud directly connected to the boat propeller and the speed motor is regulated by the pulse width modulation\ud (PWM) technique generated from the AVR microcontroller ATmega16. The final design is obtained that for\ud the boat with the total weight of 531.1758 kg, it may operate for 1.26 hours with the knot speed of 3.11 when\ud 2 PV panels of 50 W, 2 DC motor of 0.3 kW and battery of 100 A h capacity are used with the overall efficiency\ud performance not less than 87.4%