DESIGN OF AN EFFICIENT CHARGE CONTROLLER USED IN A SOLAR PV CHARGING STATION

Abstract

Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems are of great interest for electricity generation in recent days due to depletion of fossil-fueled energy sources, global warming and clean environment. The use of these systems is mainly encountered in many applications that have been common in our daily life. These applications can be on-grid and off-grid power generation, charging stations for various electric vehicles (EVs) such as plug-in EVs, electric forklift, electric motor bike, golf carts etc. This investigation proposes an approach to design an efficient charge controller used in a solar PV charging station for charging EVs with various energy capacities. In such charging stations, maximum power point tracking (MPPT) plays major role in improving efficiency and there are few ways to do that, one is to employ a dc-dc converter based on switching mode devices. For the implementation of the charge controller, a dc-dc buck converter is considered to integrate a MPPT system in which the real coded genetic algorithms technique is employed rather than using deterministic iterative methods to rapidly and precisely find the maximum power point under varying environmental conditions. The designed system is simulated by MATLAB/Simulink and initial findings are consistent and promising, and will be given more in the full paper.