Solar charging solution provides narrow-voltage DC/DC system bus for multicell-battery applications

Focus:

In solar-powered battery-charging systems, in the conventional charger architecture, the system load connects directly to the solar panel. This makes it difficult to implement maximum power point tracking (MPPT). At the same time, the system is presented with a widely varying operating voltage. In this article, a solar charger design based on a narrow-voltage dc-dc (NVDC) battery charging architecture is presented. This architecture separates the solar panel from the battery to allow MPPT, while supplying a power source with a narrow voltage range to the system. This narrow voltage range enables the power supplies downstream to be optimized for size, cost, and efficiency. This article explains the limitations of the conventional charging architecture and how the NVDC architecture overcomes these limitations as well as design considerations when implementing the NVDC architecture.

What you’ll learn:

• How to optimized solar battery charging to ensure maximum power point tracking
• How to optimize performance of the power supplies downstream of a solar charging system

Notes:

This article appeared in the Q4 2011 edition of Texas Instruments' Analog Applications Journal.

View the Source

Author & Publication:

Wang Li, Battery Power Applications Engineer, and Michael Day, Power Applications Manager, Vendor website, Oct 01 2011

This article summary appears
in the HOW2POWER Design Guide.

The Design Guide offers
organized access to
hundreds of articles
on dozens of power conversion
and power management topics.

The Design Guide search results
include exclusive summaries
and accurate "how to" analysis
to help you make faster,
more informed decisions.

Search
for more articles