Novel battery charging regulation system for photovoltaic applications

A battery-charging system for stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) applications is presented. Advantages of the proposed method are: better exploitation of the available PV energy by means of a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) technique employed in the control algorithm, increased battery lifetime due to higher level state of charge operation, and the charging control process does not depend on accurate battery current measurements, reducing the effect of the current sensor sensitivity on the battery final state of charge. Also, since it is based on the battery current regulation principle, it can be effectively used with large battery strings. The experimental results verify that, using the proposed method, a better exploitation of the available PV energy, compared to a commercial battery charger based on the on/off principle, is achieved, and simultaneously a 100% battery state of charge is reached in shorter time.