A novel strategy for battery placement in standalone solar photovoltaic converter system

Power converter with battery as energy storage element is a commonly used configuration in standalone solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. Addition of the battery enhances power availability to load. In such systems, when surplus PV power is available, it is stored in the battery and utilized when PV power does not meet load power demand. Operation of PV power converter is influenced by battery interconnection topology in standalone solar PV converter system. Several topologies have been reported in the literature for interconnecting batteries in standalone solar PV converter systems in perception of efficiency, flexibility, cost etc. In this paper, a new topology is proposed to interface batteries in standalone solar PV converters. Proposed scheme requires less number of switching elements in battery path as compared to that of traditional schemes. Furthermore, the size and hence cost of inductor involved with battery charging circuit is reduced considerably. In addition to this, power management scheme of the topology is simple. Performance of proposed scheme is validated by detailed simulation studies.