ANALYSIS OF AN IRRADIANCE ADAPTATIVE PV BASED BATTERY FLOATING

CHARGER


Nabil Karami
1
, Nazih Moubayed
2
and Rachid Outbib
1
1
Laboratory of Sciences in Information and Systems (LSIS), Aix-Marseille III University, Marseille, France.
2
Department of Electrical and Electronics, Faculty of Engineering 1, Lebanese University, Tripoli, Lebanon.

ABSTRACT

In a system composed of a PV cell, a converter and a
resistive load, the MPPT techniques are done on the output
of the PV cell and not on the load level. This study
considers a battery as load and considers its state of charge
and take into consideration that empty battery need more
current than a fully charged one and therefore the MPPT is
not useful in this case, but a smart system able to manage
the battery current based on different irradiance levels.

For a fixed voltage output of the DC/DC converter, the
current risks to reach its maximum when the battery is totally
empty which is caused by the big difference of potential
between the converter and the battery voltages. Whereas in
a fully charged battery, the difference of potential between
the charger and the battery is zero and therefore no need to
search for the MPP in this case.

The study treats first the modeling of an open loop DC/DC
buck converter and then a modeling of the converter in a
closed loop with a PID controller. Also, it proposes the use of
a microcontroller with three different circuit designs and
algorithms to manage the current and the voltage together
depending on the battery state of charge. The final design is
called a PV based battery floating charger that increase the
lifetime of the battery by controlling the converter output
voltage with respect to the consumed current, the available
PV current and the converter Mosfet tolerated current.
Keywords: Renewable energy, solar panel, photovoltaic
cell, modeling and control, battery, DC/DC converter, MPPT.
INTRODUCTION

Photovoltaic energy has become one of the most promising
sources of energy due to the fact that PV energy is free and
sustainable [1]. Few years ago, Maximum power point
tracking MPPT of the photovoltaic cells was the centre of
researches in order to reach the maximum point in minimum
time and error [2][3]. The MPPT are reached without caring
on the load nature but focuses only on the technique used to
extract the maximum power from the PV cells.
In a battery charging system, where the load seen by the
solar modules is a battery connected directly across the
solar array terminals as in figure 1, the operating point is
determined by the batterys potential. This operating point is
typically not the ideal operating voltage at which the modules
are able to produce their maximum available power.


Figure 1: Direct connection with the load

This MPPT experimental step is not applicable if the load is
a battery to be charged by the PV cell. Since the PV cell
voltage should be fixed to 2.23-2.3 volt per cell [4-6], so, a
13.8 volt for a 12 volt battery and the internal resistance of
the battery is fixed by its internal impedance and the state of
charge. Therefore, using ohm's law, the current needed to
charge the battery is fixed by the load itself and can't be
changed. For example, if the battery is empty, it behaves as
a resistor with low impedance and it absorbs much current.
And vice versa, if the battery is full, it behaves like a resistor
with high impedance, and consumes little current. Therefore,
the maximum power point is not applicable in this case and
no need to find this point in direct application of the PV cells.
Many systems described in [7-10] use the MPP by assuming
a fixed battery voltage for simplification, and since the input
and output powers of the DC/DC converter are equal (case
of 100% converter efficiency).

bat PV
Power Power (1)

Therefore,
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bat bat PV PV
I V I V (2)
In a fixed battery voltage assumption, the V
bat
is replaced by
a constant C, and the above equation will be:
bat PV PV
CI I V (3)

From equation (3), if the I
bat
reaches a maximum values, the
P
pv
will also have a maximum value. P
pv,max
, V
pv,max
and
I
pv,max
are the power, the voltage and the current of the PV at
the maximum point of operation respectively.
For a step down DC/DC converter there is only one control
parameter, namely the duty cycle D, of the power electronics
switch. The duty cycle of any DC/DC converter can be
expressed by, [9]:

bat
PV
PV
bat
I
I
V
V
D , with (4) 1 0 D

The value of the battery charging current is used to directly
control the duty cycle of the PWM control signal applied to
the DC/DC converter. An output power increase results in
both higher output current and higher duty cycle, until the
maximum power is transferred to the load [10]. This method
has the disadvantage that it can be used only in applications
where the output voltage remains relatively constant which is
the purpose of this study.
The new system takes into consideration variable battery
voltages at different state of charge (SOC) and therefore an
application of a feedback system totally different on the
MPPT that read the PV cell output and not the load input.
The system is treated in two methods, where the first is
based on a PID controller and the second is based on a
microcontroller with current protection algorithm. The two
methods use the DC/DC converter to reach the desired
output voltage.

DIRECT COUPLED WITH BUCK CONVERTER

This study considers coupling a PV panel with a battery via a
DC/DC converter. The output voltage is determined by
applying a reference voltage V
ref
to the DC/DC controller as
shown in figure 2.
The PV panel is made of two series cells KD135GH from
Kyocera where each has a 17.7 voltage at 1000 W/m
2

irradiance. The load is made of 6 series OPzV type batteries
with 2 volt each.

Figure 2: Use of a DC/DC converter between the PV and the
load

A buck converter is used to step down the PV potential to
the battery limit. The buck converter is composed of power
components, transistor and diode, followed by a low pass
filter made of a coil and a capacitor [11][12]. The controlled
components can be a Mosfet or an IGBT transistor (figure 3).

Figure 3: Buck converter design

An expression for the average output voltage is obtained as
follows:
DE V
avg

, 0
(5)

When the switch is ON, the voltage across the inductor L is
expressed as:
0
) ( v E
dt
di
L t v
L
L
(6)

When the output voltage V
0
remains steady at V
o,avg
, the
inductor current i
L
increases linearly during the ON period of
the switch. Then:
fL
V E D
DT
L
V E
I
avg avg
) (
, 0 , 0

' (7)

Where f is the frequency (Hz), and T is the period (s).
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During the ON-period, the inductor current rises from i
L,min
to
i
L,max
, where:
2
) ( ) 0 (
, 0
min ,
I
R
V
T i i i
avg
L L L
'
(8)
2
) (
, 0
max ,
I
R
V
DT i i
avg
L L
'
(9)
R represents the internal resistivity of the placed batteries.
The capacitor current i
C
is expressed as follows:
R
V
t i t i t i t i
avg
L R L C
, 0
) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( (10)
2
) ( ) 0 (
I
T i i
C C
'
(11)
2
) (
I
DT i
C
'
(12)
Since the current through the capacitor varies linearly, the
average charging current is half of its peak value of the
triangular waveform. The peak value of its triangular
waveform is shown to be I/2. Hence:
4
,
I
I
avg C
'
(13)

Based on the average charging current and half of the cycle
period as the charging period, the change in output voltage
V becomes:

C f
I
C
T I
C
T I
V
avg C
u u
'

u
u '

u
'
8 8
) 2 / (
,
(14)

The duty cycle of a DC buck converter that converts from PV
panel of 34 volt to the series batteries of 13.8 is given by the
ratio of the output on the input which is 40.58%. For a 1 Amp
peak-to-peak current output, and at 25 kHz switching
frequency, the inductor value is 328 H. A capacitor of 500
F yield to a 10mV peak-to-peak output ripples.
The buck open loop transfer function is given by:

2 2
2
2
2
1
1
) (
n n
n
S S
LC RC
S
S
LC
s G
Z [Z
Z

(15)
Where the natural frequency LC
n
/ 1 Z and the damping
ratio C L R / ) 2 / 1 ( u [ .
The open loop step response is illustrated in figure 4. This
figure shows a 13.8V steady output, a 48% overshoot and
7ms settling time, which are not acceptable in a real
application.

Figure 4: Voltage time response of the buck convertor
Therefore, the system should be controlled by an external
controller like a PID to reach an acceptable overshoot
(usually 5%) and a smaller settling time.
DIRECT COUPLED SYSTEMS WITH PID OUTPUT
POTENTIAL CONTROL

One parameter is added to the design by feeding back the
output voltage to the PWM signal controller in order to
control the response and the overshoot of the buck converter
as shown in figure 5.

Figure 5: Feedback control via battery voltage reading

In a standard closed loop design criteria, the tolerated
overshoot is 5% and the settling time depends on efficiency
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and cost of the components implemented in the design. For
an efficient buck design, it was decided to get the settling
time for 5 ms.
The transfer function of the PID controller looks like the
following:

S
Ki KpS KdS
S Gc

2
) ( (16)

K
p
is the proportional gain, K
i
designs the integral gain, and
K
d
represents the derivative gain.
The transfer function of the plant is:
6 2
6
10 09 . 6 111 1
10 09 . 6
) (
u
u

S S
S G

The closed loop of the system shown in figure 6 is:

G Gc
G Gc
S T
u
u

1
) ( (17)

In order to get the right overshoot and settling time, the
desired time domain equation requires that the maximum
overshoot is 5% and the settling time is 5 ms. Therefore:
rad/s 1449 and 0.6901
n
Z [
Thus, the desired closed loop transfer function becomes:

6 2
6
10 2.1 2000
10 2.1
) (
u
u

S S
S Gcl

Comparing the denominator of T(S) and G
cl
(S) yield:
K
i
=1721, K
p
=0.9841 and K
d
=0.00096



Figure 6: Close loop PID controller

In the battery load case, the overshoot and the settling time
presented in figure 7 are not destructive elements in the
circuit since the battery behaves as a capacitor and reduce
the effect of fast overshoots, also the time response of the
controller is not critical if it's between 5 ms and 5 second.
Therefore, the implementation of a PID in the circuit is not
rewarding and it will not come with any benefits for the
complete system.

Figure 7: Open loop, Desired, and closed loop response
MICROCONTROLLER BASED SMART DIRECT
COUPLED SYSTEM

What if the battery is fully discharged? In this case, the
battery behaves like a very small resistance, and requires a
big amount of current yield to a drop in voltage across the
battery itself. In order to prevent such cases, a special
controller design should detect this current limit excess and
control the voltage difference between the battery and the
PV cell in order to minimize the current.
Controller Design

The proposed controller of figure 8 can charge the battery
using an ascending voltage technique until reaching the
13.8V. Note that the current value depends on the difference
of potential between the source and the load.
This technique is called a floating charging technique,
[4][13][14] and it is used to supply the battery with a
proportional amount of current and voltage depending on its
state of charge.
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Figure 8: Controller with current and voltage feedback


Figure 9 represents the block diagram of the system, where
the desired voltage and the maximum allowed current are
prefixed. The system reads the actual current and voltage
and compares them to the desired ones based on the
algorithm of the figure 10.


Figure 9: Microcontroller based floating charger

The microcontroller role is to read the current and compare if
it's greater than the maximum allowed one. If it's the case,
the duty cycle of the PWM signal is decreases. If not, the
battery voltage is read and compared with the desired one,
which is 13.8V in our case. If the desired current is greater
than the actual one, the duty cycle is increased yielding to an
increase in voltage across the battery. If the actual battery
voltage is more then the desired one, the PWM duty cycle is
decreased. Also, an equality comparison between the
desired and the actual maintains the error to zero, and so
the duty cycle is kept as it is.

As shown in the algorithm of figure 10, the microcontroller
increases and decreases the value of the duty cycle by one.
So, if the PWM signal generator is based on an 8-bit
partition, the microcontroller needs 256 steps to change the
duty cycle from zero to its maximum, therefore, 256 loops of
the proposed algorithm are needed to get the maximum
value when starting from 0. In a well structured
microcontroller program code, the loop can takes about 50
microseconds for a controller running at 1 microsecond per
instruction, therefore a 256 loop may takes 13 ms as
response time, which is good enough in supplying battery
loads.


Figure 10: Microcontroller program algorithm
Determination of the maximum allowed current

The weakness of the above design is the assumption of a
prefix current limit, where in fact, the maximum and the short
circuit currents of a PV cell are determined by climatic
factors like irradiance and temperature. The design is
enhanced by taking into consideration the irradiance factor
which corresponds to the current limit. Three determination
methods are presented. The first one is by using a pilot PV
cell and the second is taking 90% of the PV cell short circuit
current and the third is a shunt based current sensor.

First method: Pilot cell

This method consists of placing a pilot cell next to the main
PV cell so it can measure the irradiance value and feed the
microcontroller by the appropriate value so it can determine
the I
max
(figure 11). This current, I
max
, will be an internal
register value and not a user defined value. The relation
between the real I
pv
and the I
pilot
can be experimentally
extracted and modeled.
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Second method: PV short circuit

This method consists of disconnecting the PV cell from the
buck converter and shorts it in order to get the I
sc
current
using a current sensor. The I
max
can be between 78 and 92%
of the I
sc
as described in [15]. This method risks of
destroying the PV cell by heating up the internal wires
connecting the series and parallel cells.


Figure 11: Design enhancement using pilot PV cell

Third method: PV resistor shunt

This method is similar to the previous one, but by placing a
small resistor in series with the PV cell. The resistor can be
chosen so the PV maximum current is 90% of the PV short
circuit current (figure 12). This method is contemptible and
need only a resistor and a relay device to switch between
the buck circuit and the resistor circuit, but the inconvenient
is that microcontroller should always try the new value of I
max

by switching off the buck converter for a small portion of
time.


Figure 12: Design enhencement using on-board current
measurement.
CONCLUSION

This study shows the difference between the direct coupled
and the indirect coupled use of the PV cells. Also focuses on
two closed loop technique in supplying a fixed voltage load.
The maximum power point tracking consider only the
maximum benefits of the solar cell and is almost used to
cross the output with the power lines so power can be sold.
The second technique focuses on the load nature and
respects their potential and current while discarding any
interest in the PV cell power and loss, but only on the safety
of the cell. The PID based output voltage controller shows a
complicated study of the buck model as far as the load
nature and parameter. For example, a buck supplying a
resistive load is modeled in a different way as if it is
supplying a battery load. Batteries are modeled as resistive
and capacitive load arranged in a complicated circuit and
therefore the pole placement of the PID depend on these
values, so; on the state of charge of the battery.

The microcontroller based control technique computes only
the difference between the desired and the load voltage level
and tracks like a proportional controller alone with a fixed
incremented and decremented value. There is no need to
enhance the settling time and the response time in a non
sensitive load like batteries.

REFERENCES
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improved maximum power point tracking algorithm
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[2] N. Moubayed, A. El ALI and R. Outbib, "
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[3] T. Esram, and P.L. Chapman, "Comparison of
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