Analysis of partial power processing distributed MPPT for a PV powered electric aircraft

Habitations in remote areas around the world lack basic infrastructure to achieve an efficient supply chain. Over 90% of roads are unpaved and fuel infrastructure is scarce. The Solarship, a hybrid between a bush plane and airship, was conceived to address this problem. It is a buoyant low-altitude aircraft with an electric power train and wing mounted photovoltaic array. Fully electric operation requires efficient lightweight power electronics to achieve a minimum range of 200 km carrying a 200 kg payload. A detailed system model is developed to explore the impact of wingspan, flight speed and drag coefficient on the flight range. A Partial Power Processing (PPP) converter based on the bidirectional Ćuk topology is demonstrated for this application. Due to the PPP concept, the converter is rated for only 26% of 2.7 kW generated PV power. The rating is optimized based on the battery and photovoltaic array voltage ranges. The experimental prototype uses Silicon Carbide MOSFETS and achieves a system efficiency of up to 99.3% with an effective specific power of 5.23 kW/kg.