Power conditioning structures and schemes for alternative renewable resource technologies

In this paper it is presented and discussed some of the typical power conditioning structures used for alternative renewable resource technologies. In particular, an array of photovoltaic (PV) panels (solar cell panels) is employed as an alternative renewable resource (ARR) technology to provide clean electric energy to remote rural residential or critical industrial loads. Typical dc-dc converters are discussed which operate to power-conditioning any particular ARR technology (solar, wind, fuel cell, etc.). It is also discussed a new proposed dc-dc converter which is employed to increase the output dc voltage delivered by the PV panels. The new approach employs a series-combined connected boost and buck-boost dc-dc converter for power conditioning of the dc-voltage provided by a photovoltaic panel array. Analysis of the two series-combined dc-dc converters is presented along with simulation and experimental results. In addition, a scheme is introduced to interconnect a supercapacitor (ultracapacitor) module as an energy storage technology (EST) along with photovoltaic panels in order to help in maintaining a critical load under uncertain environmental conditions.