DESIGN OF A SOLAR MPPT CHARGE CONTROLLER USING ARDUINO MICROCONTROLLER
Keywords:
Maximum power point, Arduino UNO, Proteus, solar panel, buck-boost.Abstract
Solar energy has become a very popular source of energy in recent days because of its eco-friendly behavior
and never-ending amount in the nature. However, in practical case, the I-V and P-V characteristics of a solar panel
contain a huge amount of ripples which actually affect the performance of the system. Therefore, to utilize solar energy
efficiently, at a particular irradiance and temperature, Maximum Power Point (MPP) has to be determined and this
maximum power must be extracted. In Proteus 8.3 Professional software, a simulation model of a MPPT based solar
charge controller is designed using Arduino UNO, a multi-tasking programming platform based on AVR
microcontroller. At different irradiance, MPP changes, and the maximum power point voltage (Vmp) also changes. The
proposed model successfully tracks the Vmp at different irradiance. As finally charge controller circuit charges a dc
battery, hence, after extracting maximum power from the solar panel, buck converter feeds it to a buck-boost converter to
regulate the voltage.
