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on Control, Communication and Power Engineering 2010

Design Considerations of a Solar Powered Street Light for Stand -Alone PV Systems
Mini Rajeev, Sreedevi .S. Nair, and Seema Jadhav
Department of Electrical Engineering, Fr .C .Rodrigues Institute of Technology, Vashi, NaviMumbai minirajeev1@yahoo.co.in,sreedevi_nair@rediffmail.com,mrunmai_seema@rediffmail.com
Abstract This paper deals with the basic design considerations of a stand alone solar powered street lighting system using Light Emitting Diode as the light source. Selection of all the components of the solar powered street light which includes Photovoltaic panel, Battery, DC/DC converter, Microcontroller and the Light detection circuit are discussed in detail. LED lighting, besides longer life and lower power consumption, compared to Compact Fluorescent Lamp is considered to be absolute green technology.Use of solar powered street light reduces the global consumption of electricity, CO2 emissions and dependence on fossil fuels. Index Terms - PV panel, MPPT, Street Light, Boost converter, LED.

through a DC/AC converter (i.e inverter) as shown in the generic block diagram of fig. 1. Inverter AC Load

PV Array V

DC/DC Converter

Battery

Micro Controller I

DC Load

I. INTRODUCTION Taking care of the environment is an issue that belongs to all mankind as every individual is the custodian of our environment. The rate at which the conventional energy sources are diminishing is creating an alarming concern. Not only these sources are diminishing but also they contribute to greenhouse gas emissions thereby polluting the environment. India ranks sixth [1] in the world in total energy consumption and the demand for energy is expected to increase to keep pace with its development objectives. In order to meet the increasing demand of electrical energy and simultaneously reduce negative environmental impacts, it is very important to reduce the dependence on non sustainable, nonrenewable fossil fuels and to incorporate renewable energy as a source of electrical generation. Renewable energy is the energy from a source that is replaced by a natural process and is not subject to depletion in a human time scale. Most renewable forms of energy except geothermal and tidal energy, ultimately come from the sun [2].Among the renewable energy sources, solar energy is the most important as it is clean, nonpolluting, inexhaustible and free. Photo Voltaic (PV) systems offer the possibility of exploiting suns energy available everywhere. The main applications of PV systems are either stand-alone applications such as water pumping, domestic lighting, street lighting, electric vehicles, and space applications or grid-connected configurations such as hybrid systems and power plants. A standalone PV system is the one which is not connected to the power grid and consists mainly of a PV array for converting sunlight to electricity, Battery for energy storage, DC/DC converter for interfacing the PV panel and battery and Microcontroller for controlling the operation of the DC/DC converter. If the load requires dc power, battery can supply the power directly and if AC power is needed, battery can be connected to the load 277
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Figure 1. Generic block diagram of the system

II. PV PANEL CHARACTERISTICS The V-I and P-V characteristics of a 75Wp, 12V PV panel which was tested at 28oC at 11.30 am in the month of January with variable resistance load [3] is shown in fig. 2. It is clear from Fig.2, that the current delivered (I) by the panel remains relatively constant over a wide range of voltage and the panel output power (P) will be maximum when the voltage across the terminals of PV panel is 15 V.

Figure 2. Characteristic of PV panel

This means that, with this particular operating condition of temperature and insolation, only if the panel is operated at this voltage of 15V, maximum power can be drawn from the PV panel. By doing this, the conversion efficiency of the PV panel is improved. III. NEED FOR MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING In the generic block diagram in fig. 1, if the PV panel is directly connected to battery without using DC/DC converter, the PV panel will be forced to operate

Proc. of Int. Conf. on Control, Communication and Power Engineering 2010

at the battery voltage. The PV panel is considered as a current source and hence voltage at its terminals depends on the load connected across the PV panel. Therefore if the panel is operated at the battery voltage which is not necessarily the maximum power point (MPP) of the PV panel, some of the power-generating capability of the PV panel is lost. Any deviation from this MPP will reduce the conversion efficiency of the PV panel. In order to extract the maximum power which the PV panel is capable of delivering, an electronic system called Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) system [4] is required. Since the MPP of the PV panel depends on the insolation, ambient temperature etc, MPPT must constantly adapt to maximize the power transfer from the PV panel. So a DC/DC converter is interfaced between the PV panel and the battery for MPPT. With the increased use of PV systems and in view of their high cost, more attention is given to the design of MPPT to optimize the utilization of PV panel so that the size and cost of the entire system can be reduced. IV. CONTROL ALGORITHM Various methods have been proposed in the literature to implement the maximum power point tracking [5] in solar powered applications. The MPPT typically uses an iterative process to find the maximum power point.The most widely used methods are the Perturb & Observe (P & O) method and the method based on the Incremental Conductance (dp/dv method).

Figure 4. Flow chart of the dp/dv algorithm

Flow chart of the dp/dv algorithm is given in fig. 4. The micro controller sends an arbitrary value of duty cycle to the DC/DC converter to initiate the process. At first, it detects voltage and current values from the PV panel and multiples it to obtain the power (P=V*I). Then it gets the next values and calculates power. The present power (P) and voltage (V) are subtracted from their value at previous instants and thus sign of the slope, dp/dv is determined. Depending on the sign of the dp/dv slope, the duty cycle is decremented or incremented, thereby changing the voltage conversion ratio of the DC/DC converter. This forces the panel to operate at the voltage where it delivers the maximum power. To locate the operating point on PV curve, dynamic step size concept is used here. In this, the step size is determined based on the sign of three previous iterations of dp/dv. This helps in tracking MPP faster, thereby improving transient response of the dc/dc converter. Another advantage of using dynamic step size is that the operating point will not oscillate much near MPP. V. DESIGN DETAILS The bock diagram of the stand-alone PV system with LED lamp is shown in fig. 5. When sunshine is there, the solar panel charges the battery through the DC/DC converter with the help of suitable light detection circuit. The same light detection circuit disconnects the battery from the DC/DC converter and connects it to the load during the night time. The street light has dusk to dawn operation for about 10hrs per day.The MPPT is most commonly constructed out of DC/DC converters that use Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technique to vary the duty cycle of the switch used in it. This duty cycle of the DC/DC converter is controlled by the microcontroller, so that the PV panel gives the maximum power output which it can deliver at that specific atmospheric condition.

Figure 3. PV characteristics with dp/dv algorithm

A common problem in P&O algorithm is that the PV panel terminal voltage is perturbed every MPPT cycle; therefore when the MPP is reached, the output power oscillates around the maximum, resulting in power loss in the PV system. Since the incremental conductance method offers good performance under rapidly changing atmospheric conditions that method is considered in this paper. The dp/dv method is based on the fact that the slope of the P-V characteristics of the panel is zero at the MPP, positive on the left of the MPP and negative on the right as shown in fig. 3[6]. Once MPP has been reached, the operation of PV panel is maintained at this point until a change in operating condition is noticed. 278
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Figure 5. Block diagram of the system

Design aspects of various components of the system shown in fig. 5, are discussed below. A. PV panel sizing Sizing a PV system is, a quite complex issue because several stochastic parameters having a significant contribution, are involved like the meteorological data, variation of demand on daily and seasonal bases, and economical considerations.Mainly the panel sizing [7] depends on the total system load, which means determination of wattage of the unit and usage hours of load. Here we are considering 18W lamp load which will be used for 10hrs daily and hence total daily load becomes 180Whr. (1) PV Panel Load= Wh per day/ ( B* C). PV Array Size= PV Panel Load / (Insolation *0.85). (2) The PV Panel Load and PV Array Size is calculated by (1), and (2) respectively where B is the battery efficiency ( 80%) and C is the charge controller efficiency(90%) and 0.85 is the mismatch factor. The average insolation during the least sunny days is 5.2KWh/m2/day in India [7]. From (1), and (2), a 75Wp, 12V solar PV panel is chosen. Table 1 shows data given by the manufacturer for 75Wp, 12V PV panel. The rated peak power (75Wp), is available only at Standard Test Conditions (STC) such as cell temperature of 25oC and insolation of 1kW/m2.
TABLE I
SPECIFICATIONS OF 75WP, 12V PV PANEL (STC)

B. Battery sizing Street Lighting systems typically use either lead acid or alkaline batteries because of their high energy density to cost ratio and ability to function in a wide range of temperatures [8]. Car batteries cannot be used as they are not designed for repeated deep discharges. Nickel-Cadmium batteries can be deeply discharged many times without harm and are less affected by temperature changes than lead-acid batteries, but are more expensive and very expensive to recycle. As a result, their use is primarily restricted to applications where more reliability and low maintenance is required. In India, with PV systems the most commonly used batteries are lead-acid batteries. Battery storage capacity is generally rated in amperehours (Ah). This is the amount of current that a battery will deliver over a given number of hours at its normal voltage and at a temperature of 25C. Battery sizing is done depending on the the voltage of the battery, the wattage of the load, the duration of operation and the ambient temperature of the batteries. Battery Sizing = (Daily Load *2) /(Nominal Voltage*0.5) (3) In the calculation two days of reserve backup is considered. Based on (3), 24V, 30 Ah lead acid battery is selected for the application. The value 0.5 is the maximum allowable discharge of the battery. This enhances the life of the battery. C. DC/DC Converter The converter configuration is chosen based on the ratings of the PV array and the battery voltage. Boost converter configuration is preferably used because compared to buck converter, boost converter can track the MPP in almost all conditions [9]. Boost converter shown in Fig.6 is used to step up the voltage of the PV panel to the voltage suitable for battery. 10% of the input current is considered as ripple in inductor current (I) and 1% of the output voltage Vo is taken as ripple in the output voltage (Vo) for the boost converter [10].A switching frequency of 25 kHz is chosen for the design and a MOSFET of appropriate rating is selected as the switch (S).

Sl. No. 1 2 3 4 5 6

Parameters Short circuit current Open circuit Voltage Maximum Power Maximum Power Voltage Maximum Power Current No. of solar cells

Values 5A 21V 75W 17V 4.4A 36

Figure 6. Boost converter circuit

L Vi *D *T / (2*I) (4) C = D *Io * TS / Vo (5) Here Ts and D are the switching time period and duty cycle of the switch S used in the converter. Vi is the output voltage of the PV array and Vo is the voltage of the battery. A value of 1 mH of inductor and 100F capacitor was designed for this work. 279

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Choice of diode D is a trade off between breakdown voltage, speed and forward voltage. Higher the forward voltage more power will be dissipated and lost. If the load is suddenly disconnected, there is a possibility of large voltages and hence the diode must have a high breakdown voltage. As the switch S is operated at high frequency, the diode also should operate faster and hence reverse recovery time of the diode also should be less. D. Control Circuit The system is built around 80C51 Microcontroller which has a powerful instruction set, with built in multiply function [11]. The controller uses two Analog to Digital Converters (ADCs) for reading the voltage and the current as shown in fig. 7.These values are used for calculating the instantaneous power output of the PV array. Based on dp/dv algorithm which is fed in to the microcontroller, digital signals are generated which are converted to analog signals by using Digital to Analog Converter (DAC).These analog signals are fed to Pulse Width Modulator (PWM) and its output is connected to the gate terminal of MOSFET in the DC/DC converter to control the duty ratio of the boost converter.

50,000hrs of operation [12] is considered if a single CFL is replaced by LED light. Hence it is preferable to use LEDs as the light source because it has many advantages such as longer life, suitable for frequent on/off use, absence of trace of mercury and high reliability compared to CFL. VI. CONCLUSION The design considerations of all the components of a solar powered street light are discussed in detail. The incremental conductance algorithm used for MPPT, automatically adjusts the step size according to the operating point of the PV panel and this helps to track maximum power point faster. The implementation of the solar powered street light with Light Emitting Diode as the light source mentioned here, is in the process and will be used to replace the conventional grid dependent street lights of our campus. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors wish to thank Nitin Gawde and et al, the students (2005-2009) of the Department of Electrical Engineering of Fr.C.R.I.T, Vashi who helped us in this work. REFERENCES
Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Government of India, Ministry of Power. [2] K.Sidhu, Nonconventional Energy Resources, PEC Campus, Punjab State Electricity Board, Chandigarh. [3] PV Labnotes, Elec3205, Electrical Energy Systems & Management, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of Sydney [4] Brian Johnson, Thesis submitted on Power Conditioning in Photovoltaic systems, Texas State University-San Marcos, 2007. [5] T. Esram, P.L. Chapman, Comparison of Photovoltaic array maximum power point techniques ,IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, vol.22,no.2,June 2007,pp.439-449. [6] D.P.Holhm,M.E.Ropp, Comparitive Study of Maximum Power point Tracking Algorithma, Progress In Photovoltaics: Research And Applications, page 47-56, January 2003 [7] Shirish Sinha, Anand Shukla, Nandita Hazarika From sunlight to electricity solar photovoltaic application, Winrock International, 1998, New Delhi. [8] Rakesh Reddy, Maximum Peak Power Trackers increase efficiency of solar panels in Street Lights, Cypress Semiconductor Corp..August 2009 [9] Geoff Walker Evaluating MPPT Converter Topologies using a MATLAB PV Model, Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Queensland, Australia [10] L.Umanand, S.R Bhat, Design of magnetic components for switched mode power converters, New Age International (P) Limited,2001, New Delhi [11] E. Koutroulis, K. Kalaitzakis, and N. C. Voulgaris, "Development of a microcontroller-based, photovoltaic maximum power point tracking control system," IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 16, pp. 46-54, Jan. 2001. [12] Mini Rajeev, Divya M, Ruchi H,A Study of Replacing CFL with LED Lamp for Solar Powered Street Light used for Stand Alone PV Systems , NCNTE-2010. [1]

Figure 7. Interfacing circuit

The voltage generated by the PV panel can be anywhere between zero and twenty one volts. This voltage range needs to match that of the maximum input voltage range of the microcontroller, which is zero to five volts Voltage sensing is done with the help of simple potential divider network and is then given to ADC. A shunt is placed in series in the return path and is used to sense the PV panel current.Since this voltage drop is very small this voltage is amplified before giving to the ADC by suitable operational amplifier circuit. E. Light Detection Circuit Light dependent resistor circuit (LDR) could be used as light detection circuit based on the fact that when light falls on the LDR, it gives low resistance and when it becomes dark, LDR offers high resistance. Using LDR circuit battery will be connected to the boost converter in the morning and in the night, it will be disconnected from boost converter and connected to the lamp load. F. Lamp Load A comparative study was done between retrofit type Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) which is an excellent replacement of incandescent lamp with Light Emitting Diode (LED) light source. The CFL considered has a luminous efficiency or efficacy of 60 lumens / watt and LED lamp has an efficacy 93 lumens/watt. Since the lamp has dusk to dawn operation, 10 hrs of lighting per day is taken for the calculation of energy consumed. It was found that there will be a saving of Rs.2260/- when 280
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