The High-lightness LED Controller Using Solar Energy Basing on PSoC Yuan Zhaohui Wang Yi The department of automation

The department of automation Northwestern Polytechnical University(NWPU) Northwestern Polytechnical University(NWPU) Xian, Shaanxi, China Xian, Shaanxi, China E-mail: yuanzhh@nwpu.edu.cn E-mail: wangyi_2579@qq.com Zhang Hui Jiang Huijun The department of automation The department of automation Northwestern Polytechnical University(NWPU) Northwestern Polytechnical University(NWPU) Xian, Shaanxi, China Xian, Shaanxi, China E-mail: huimei52007@yahoo.com.cn E-mail: eleven0215@163.com has its d isadvantage that the solar cells is easy to oscillate in the AbstractAiming at the situation where solar energy is rich vicinity of MPP. In terms of this, the paper proposes the in remote mountain areas and in field but inconvenient for wiring improved method of P&O with threshold which can efficiently and maintaining power grid, this paper put forward the idea of reduce an d resolve the problem. The controller regulating the using the HBLED as the illumination light source and taking LED brigh tness with environmental light not only meets the advantage of solar energy at the same time. Then, the HBLED practical requirements of unmanned lighting in various controller based on PSoC (programmable system-on-chip) occasions mountain areas and so on, but also saves the energy and extend the life time of HBLED, save the energy in a much more effective the lifet ime of LED. Based on these ideas, the controller way by improving the P&O algorithm to achieve the solar cells introduce d in the paper adopts an innovative PSoC, and MPPT MPPT(Maximum Power Point Tracking), and regulate the is achiev ed by the improved P&O with threshold. After being brightness of HBLED according to the light of circumstance. , such as in the city s lawn, in the yard of the technology is introduced in this paper. This controller can extend

charged b y the method of MPPT to the maximum capacity, the Finally, the wide used controller which contains the control battery i s in a constant voltage. At the same time, the controller circuit and HBLED driver circuit is introduced in this paper. In uses PWM dimming mode to control the high-brightness this paper, the design of the control circuit and the HBLED LEDs light ness, and the process of deducing the value of driver circuit and the method of calculating the inductor L of the inductor L of the drive circuit is also described in the paper. driver circuit are introduced. This controller has wide The contr oller which owns the merits of high efficiency, small applications. ripple an d high-quality white light has wide applications Index Termssolar energy, high-lightness LED (HBLED), MPPT, PWM, PSoC II. THE SOLAR CELLS MANAGEMENT I. INTRODUCTION A. Solar Cells Output Characteristics Nowadays, using solar energy in the remote mountain areas The va lue of solar cells output power is affected by the or in the field is crucial, for it not only saves energy in the temperatu re of solar cells and solar radiation intensity. The situation that energy is increasingly shortage nowadays, but temperatu re mainly affects the open circuit voltage, and the solves the problem of inconvenience in wiring the power grid radiation mainly affects short-circuit current. At different in remote mountain areas. Experts predict that the HBLED will temperatu res and radiations, the maximum power point is in be a new generation of light source following the incandescent different locations, but under a certain temperature and lamp and the fluorescent lamp [1]. It is a perfect combination radiation , solar cells only have a maximum power. Therefore, between the new energy (solar energy) and the new light output ch aracteristic curve shows the characteristic of single source (the high-brightness LED), taking advantage of solar peak [2]. Figure 1 shows the solar cell output characteristics at energy s merits that is clean, environment protection and temperature and radiation. inexhaustibility and the LED s merits that is high efficiency, long life and haze-penetrating capability. outdoor.

a certain

The pi

cture1 suggests that, in order to use solar energy effective ly, the maximum power point tracking control should People have proposed the idea of MPPT, which can use be carrie d out in the solar cells. solar energy more efficiently. The traditional perturbation and observation (P&O) method which is a kind of MPPT algorithm 978-1-4244-2800-7/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE ICIEA 2009 950 makes the point of operation of the solar cells oscillate near the MPP and generates the loss of the energy and the instability of the output voltage. The oscillation in the vicinity of the MPP is affected by the value of disturbance. The loss of the energy will be increased as the oscillation is aggravated, and the tracking rate of the algorithm will be reduced when the disturbance value is decreased [4]. To compensate the shortage, this paper puts forward the improved P&Q with the threshold. In another words, P is compared with Q, rather than zero. Figure 1. The solar cell output characteristics at a certain temperature and The principal chart of P&O with threshold is shown in the radiation figure 2.If the absolute value of P is less than the threshold of Q(the output voltage is between U3~U4 in the figure 2),the pulse width of PWM is unchanged, and only the value of B. MPPT Algorithm voltage and current is detected, and the P is calculated. The MPPT algorithm is actually a self-optimizing process, Because the difference between U3~U4 is very small, adjusting which doesnt directly detect the temperature of the solar cells PWM can produce the oscillation of operating point, the and the solar radiation intensity, but detecting the solar cell unstable output voltage and very small increase of output output voltage and current to determine the MPP [2]. At power. The improved P&O method can effectively reduce the present, there many common used methods by using MPPT frequency of oscillation and make the solar cells work in the algorithm such as voltage tracking, scanning interval, the vicinity of the MPP, and if external factors change slowly, it perturbation and observation (P&O), incremental conductance can even eliminate the oscillation. In fact the traditional P&O (IncCond), fuzzy control and neural network control method, method is as same as the improved one when it comes to the and the most effective are P&O and IncCond.

special situation Q = 0. In practice, for the accuracy of sensors or ADC and the processing mechanism of float data in MCU, Theoretically, the IncCond method is impeccable, but the P=0 is hard to exist, and that is the reason why the operating accuracy of ADC or the sensor is limited, which can not meet point oscillate so often in the traditional algorithm. the Di/Dv = - I/U. Therefore, the errors are inevitable. The determined rule of the threshold Q: Q should be less The P&O method is one of these methods, which tracking than P value which is caused by (except the MPP point effect is better and easier to achieve in engineering [3]. The annex) the change of the pulse width of PWM by one count tracking effect of these algorithms has been compared in the unit. According to the figure 2, by using mathematical article [3] by using the simulation in the MATLAB. expressions, the value of the threshold Q is obtained. C. the Principles of the P&O Method and the Improved One Assume the output characteristic function of the solar cells The P&O method makes a tiny disturbance of operating is P = P(U), where U is the output voltage. Let K is the slope of voltage in the solar cells by adjusting the duty cycle of PWM, any point of the curve. Then: k = dP / dU .In accordance with and then gets the P compared with the last output by the disturbance threshold observation scheme, the inequation is detecting the present output power. If P > 0, the next PWM obtained as follow: duty cycle should be increased by the width of a count unit; If Q < dP U max D P = 0, the next PWM pulse width is unchanged, whereas the dU U (0,U ) (U ,U ) contrary. According to figure 1, solar energy output 3 4 max ,where Umax is the maximum value of the voltage produced by characteristic is the curve which has one and only one single the solar cells which is among the voltages of arbitrary peak, so this algorithm can find the MPP of curve. temperatures and radiations, and D is the change of PWM duty cycle affected by the change of one count unit. The improved P&O method obtains the stable output power by sacrificing the tiny difference of powers, therefore it is worthy for the charge of battery and the controller. By reducing (1)

the Q value, the chance of working at the MPP in solar cells will be increased, but the probability of oscillation will be also increased at the same time. In practice, the value of Q is estimated by the formula (1), and the most appropriate value is obtained by debugging. III. Figure 2. The principle diagram of P&O with the threshold THE DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTROLLERS WORKING PRINCIPLE As it is hard to fulfill P=0 in the vicinity of the MPP by using the traditional method of P&O, the disturbance of The working principle: the block diagram of the HBLED operating voltage from PWM still can not be avoided, which controller adopting solar energy is shown in the Figure 3.The 9 51 source of the controller is solar energy. The battery is charged ltage is used to avoid the battery being over by the solar panel during the day, and it is discharged by e ADC6, ADC7 and ADC5 collect the output lightening the HBLED. The MCU judges the day or night by solar panels, the voltage of the battery and the acquisition of solar cells voltage using ADC5. If the voltage e solar panel respectively. adopted in the day is greater then the threshold V_ON, the diode preventing the solar cells from being charged MCU will regulate the duty cycle of PWM5,and control the by the batt ery. Only when the solar panels output voltage is charge of battery; while in the night, the adopting voltage will higher than the batterys can Z1 be turned on. Otherwise, be less than the threshold V_OFF, and the MCU will turn off when it is rain or in the night, Z1 will be turned off in order to the PWM5.When the voltage of the battery is greater than ensure the battery not to charge the solar cells in the opposite cut-off voltage, the MCU will compare the value of HBLED direction. current collected by ADCn(n=1~4) with the objective value, and regulate the duty cycle of PWMn to maintain the current diode protecting the circuit. When the battery of HBLED. Actually, the essence of the controller is a negative are not correctly connected, Z2 will be turned on, feedback system. The controller can change the objective e battery discharges through the Z2. And the circuit value according to the environmental light intensity, fulfilling e a large current so that the fuse F will be burnt out. the requirement of saving energy. Meanwhile, the controller e role of "anti-connect battery protection [5]. save the parameters in the EEPROM by communicating with Z2 is a polarities and then th will produc It plays th constant vo charged. Th current of voltage of th Z1 is a

R1 is t he sampling resistor of the output current of the the upper computer through the UART interface, fulfilling solar cells , and its resistance should be small. The C1 and C2 parameters setting in the controller and the network control of are the pre -filter capacitances, which can filter high-frequency RS232/485. interferenc e noise of the solar cells and battery voltage when ADCs collec t the data. S2 is a MOSFET switch controlling the battery to discharge. From the point of view of protecting the battery, when the ba ttery voltage is less than the cut-off voltage, S2 will be tur ned off. Z2 will cut off the load circuit and the battery is to avoid the battery being over discharged and damaged. Wh en the batterys voltage is enough, S2 will be turned on. B. HBLED Dr iver Circuit Design and the method of the Calculation Inductor L Value Figure 3. The system block diagram of the controller Figure 5 is the picture of the HBLED driver circuit. The The requirement can be achieved by selecting the phase of PW M is reversed by the transistor T1 to trigger T2, CY8C27243 of the series of PSoC to realize the controller. so MOSFET S 1 will be turned on or off. When the pulse width The CY8C27243 adopting the 8-bit Harvard architecture core, of PWM is h igh, T1 is turned on, and the base of T2 is low, has 24MHz clock speed and much faster processing speed. and T2 is t urned off .Therefore the gate of S1 is low, and S1 is on, wher eas the contrary [6]. IV. THE CIRCUIT OF THE CONTROLLER V_out A. the Main Loop Circuit T2 R2 L The controllers main loop circuit is shown in Figure 4. PWM S1 Solar_in+ and Solar_in- are connected with the output of solar R1 LED

D1 cells, V_out+ and V_out are connected with the DC load, ADC + T1 and VB and GND are connected with the two ends of positive + D2 C1 R3 and negative batteries. C2 Figure 5. The HBLED driver circuit When MO SFET S1 is turned on, the battery voltage flows through the circuit V_outLLEDR3GND V_out to drive the H BLED and, at the same time, the inductor L stores the energy. When S1 is turned off, the stored energy in L flows through the loop LLEDR3GNDD2L to drive HBLED. Figure 4. The charge circuit of the controller The ind uctor L plays a very important role in the drive circuit. Th e inductor L and other parameters of the controller PWM5 controls the modulated pulse width of switch S1 to all togethe r determine the value of the ripple, but the charge the battery according to the algorithm of P&O with parameters sometimes are constant or can not be changed threshold. When the battery is in full capacity, the charge of 952 easily. So it is important to calculate an appropriate value of The controller regulates the HBLED brightness according to the inductor L. The paper introduces the method of calculating environmental factors such as light intensity. On the one hand, the inductor L by means of Figure 6 and Figure 7. it saves the energy of the battery to avoid the unnecessary waste, and on the other hand, the lifetime will be shorted when S1 L HBLED always work in very high current. The lifetime of using LED will be improved by adopting the constant current Vin + control to reduce the current fluctuation. In the city's green LED D Co lawn, unmanned street lighting in the courtyard of the mountain, adopting such a way to control can not only be able

to meet practical demands, but saving energy and prolonging Figure 6. The simplified equivalent circuit diagram of the HBLED drive the lifetime of HBLED . In Figure 6, when S1 is turned on, inductor L begins to V. CONTROLLER SOFTWARE DESIGN, HARDWARE PICTURE store the energy; When S1 is turned off, the stored energy in L drives the HBLED continuously. On the ideal condition, AND THE RIPPLE CURRENT TEST VDIODE = 0: (VINVO)DTperide = VO(1D)Tperide There are two major steps in the software design. The first Where VO/VIN =D(<1) ON= DTperide; TOFF= (1D)Tperide. ep is that the CY8C27243 is designed to satisfy the real ,T The current flowing through the inductor L can be depicted by needs of the controller; the second step is that the MCU is the two formulas: programmed according to the controller demand. These two IL(ON) =(VINVO)TON/L, s can be designed in the PSoC Designer4.0 environment. IL(OFF) =(VDIODEVO)TOFF/L When given VIN, O, Tperide, Iripple, the value of the inductor V D, L can be calculated. L =(VINVO)DTperide / Iripple By using the parameters which fulfill the requirement, the value of L can be calculated to meet requirements in different conditions by the formula (5). Figure 8. The software flow chart of Controller The MCU is designed using 12-incremental ADC, whose sampling rate is up to 480sps, and 12-bit ADCs accuracy can Figure 7. The timing of equivalent circuit diagram meet the needs; Adopting 8-bit PWM can meet the The controller parameters are as follows: VIN=12V, requirements of HBLED driver, and its resolution can up to VO=9.4V, D=78%, Tperide =1/150k, Iripple=350mA 10%. The (1/160) at the 150KHz frequency modulation. Using value of L should be 386uH, obtained by the formula (5), and UART modules and E2PROM is to achieve the intelligent it can meet the practical needs. control and setting. The upper computer communicates with the controller by means of the interface RS232/485. According C. Brightness Control to the former description of the controllers principles and the There are mainly three ways to regulate the intensity of the improved P&O algorithm, the controller software flow chart light for HBLED: analog, digital and PWM. The former two can be obtained, shown in Figure 8. methods change the brightness by changing the HBLEDs Figure 9 is the controller picture in laboratory. In

(2) st

(3) (4)

step

(5)

1%

current, so the HBLEDs color will drift. The advantage of laboratory conditions, the stable DC power of SS1792E is using the PWM is the color will not drift when the brightness used to simulate 12V battery and solar cells. The light source is changed [7]. This paper selects the PWM control methods. adopts the 12 LEDs with 3W respectively which can be apart The HBLED life span is affected by three points: the in 4 groups, produced by CREE. Considering the heat temperature, the static electricity and the driven approach. The dissipating from HBLEDs, they are fixed on a dissipation heat temperature and the static electricity can be solved by module using the silica HC704. designing the substructure to dissipate the heat and the encapsulation of HBLED. There will be a luminous decay if HBLED works for a long time at the situation where the current is high and fluctuated, and its life span will be shorted. 953 VI. CONSLUSION The study and the design of HBLED controller which use solar energy are introduced in this paper. The improved P&O method to achieve the MPPT algorithm is introduced and adopted in the controller, and the improved P&O method improves stability of the output voltage of the solar cells. It can save more energy and increase the lifetime of HBLED by means of changing HBLEDs light intensity, according to the environment brightness and the dimming way of PWM. The method of calculating the value of the inductor L in the HBLED driver circuit is given. The test results show that the designed controller having wide applications can meet the needs of practical application. The Battery interface The Solar panel interface

REFERENCES Figure 9. The controller picture in laboratory [1] Bergh A, Cruford G, Duggul A, et al. The promise and challeng e of solid-state lighting[J]. Physics Today, 2001, 54(12):42- 47. The turn-on-off logic of the lamp of the controller are [2] Lee DY, Noh HJ, Hyun DS, et al. An improved MPPT converter us ing tested well. The ripple current test of the HBLED: the DC

current compensation method for small scaled PV-applications [A]. power output (simulating the solar cells) is to be regulated to Applied Power electronics conference and exposition, 2003[C]. APEC 03 close to zero (simulating night, the normal state of discharge), Eighteenth Annual IEEE, Florida, USA,2003. and another output (simulating the battery) is set to be 12V. [3] Cui Yang, Cai Binghuang, Li Dayong, Hu Hongxun,Dong Jingwei, The voltage of HBLEDs two poles can be measured by the comparative studies on the MPPT control algorithms of solar ene rgy photovoltaic system [A], Acta Energiae Solaris Sinica ,Vol.27 ,No. 6, oscilloscope. The voltage waveform can be shown in figure Jun. ,2006,p535~539 10(There isnt a direct measurement of the current wave [4] Kawamura T, Harada K, Ishihara U, et al. is of MPPT oscilloscope in the laboratory). y Peak-Peak Value Materials and Solar Cells, 1997, 47: 155-165 [5] ZHANG Sheng-thong ,Design of Controller Applied in VWVF for Solar Yellow Traffic Flash Signal Lamp Based on PIC16F676[J] , Power Supply Technologies And Applications,Vol.9 No.12,Decemh er 2006:14-17 [6] Ma Lei ,Liu Deming ,Huang Lirong ,Wen Feng ,Research and The Positive voltage minus the negative wave Development tor-lighting System[J],Semiconductor Optoelectronics Vol. 28 No. 2,Apr. 20 07: 279-286 [7] Fujia, BOOST Topology Dual-mode PWM LED Driver[J], Zhejiang The waveform of LED positive voltage University, April, 2007:7~9 The waveform of LED negative voltage None Figure 10. The voltage wave chart of HBLEDs two poles of Controller for Solar-semiconduc Analys

characteristics in photovoltaic power system[J]. Soloar Energ

The analysis of the waveform: the meaning of each waveform can be seen in Figure 10. In figure 10, the peak value of the voltage at the positive pole is 600mV, added by the peak value of 40mV at the negative pole, and then the voltage ripple of 640mV is obtained. HBLEDs resistance is about 26.5 Ohms at 350mA current by consulting the HBLEDs datasheet. According to the meaning of the ripple, it is the difference between the highest point and the lowest point in the waveform. The current peak of the peak ripple is calculated as follow: 640mV / 26.5 Ohms = 24.15mA and the relative size of the ripple is as follow: 24.15/350 = 6.9% The result has met the real needs, and the method of calculation of the driver s circuit inductor L is confirmed, which is a appropriate method. 954