Peak power tracking for a solar buck charger

Abstract

This thesis discusses the design, implementation, and testing of a buck converter with peak power tracking. The peak power tracker uses a perturb and observe algorithm to actively track the solar panel's peak power point and a global sweep algorithm accounts for startup and multiple local maxima. The tracker takes the place of the current mode loop in the converter's control scheme by providing a battery with peak charging current. A voltage mode loop is also designed to take over control from the tracker to complete the multi-loop structure. A solar panel simulator is designed to mimic the characteristics of an actual solar panel to allow careful testing of the tracking algorithms. A test circuit board is built and its operation is verified. Finally, the power extracting potential of the active tracking method from this thesis is compared to two simpler solar regulators.