Regulation and Control of Solar Array Power - A Minimum Power Dissipation Approach

Two approaches to a full-shunt regulator for regulation and control of solar array output power are described in this paper. The first approach, Linear-Partial-Shunt regulation, reduces the power dissipated in the shunt regulator to less than one-half of the power dissipated in a full-shunt regulator. The second approach, Linear-Sequential-Partial-Shunt regulation, reduces the power dissipation to less than one-sixth of that dissipated in a full-shunt regulator. The approaches discussed in this paper are simple and cost-effective, and can be easily implemented in any size solar array power system.