Study on partially shaded conditions regulators for PV based electrically powered vehicles

Abstract

At present times, the inclusion of renewable energies in the field of transportation has become crucial to reduce its contaminant emissions. One way in which transportation could take advantage of solar energy is by installing photovoltaic panels on the surface of the vehicles and use their power to charge the battery of electric/hybrid vehicles. An important condition that should be considered is the variability of the solar irradiance. If the panels are set in the surface of a vehicle, their orientations are different. Consequently, the irradiance each panel receives is different from one to another. The department of Mechanical Engineering has 4 photovoltaic panels of around 30W maximum power each which will be studied and will serve as reference for the panels in the study, simulating they are the panels that could be set in the surface of a vehicle. Afterwards, these panels are going to be simulated in MATLAB/Simulink forming part of a photovoltaic system with a load regulator feeding a battery under partially shaded conditions (PSC). A maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm capable of working under PSC is going to be implemented in the simulation of the system and its operation is going to be compared to the operation of a commonly used algorithm.