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DESIGN OF A SEPIC CONVERTER FOR SOLAR PV SYSTEM

Conference Paper · March 2017

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 DESIGN OF A SEPIC CONVERTER FOR SOLAR PV SYSTEM
Mr.K.Natarajan1, M.Supriya2, Y.Abinaya3, P.Nandhakumar4, G.R.Samrajesh5
Assistant professor1, Scholars 2,3,4,5
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Sri Ramakrishna Institute of Technology
Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu- 641010, India.
E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected].

ABSTRACT: This paper presents the design of a characterize the maximum power from the panel
Single Ended Primary Inductor Converter (SEPIC) can be stored into the battery. The MPPT gain is
for solar PV system. SEPIC acts like a buck-boost mainly based on the climatic condition and solar
DC-DC converter and it allows a range of DC voltage irradiation. The current and voltage characteristics
adjust to maintain a constant output voltage. of the solar array were described and the array was
Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) technique found to deliver the maximum amount of power
should be used to track the maximum power point only at one point on the characteristic which
continuously which depends on panel’s irradiance corresponds to the knee of the curve called as the
conditions in PV solar system. The Maximum power maximum power point.
point has been achieved by adjusting the switching
frequency of the converter. The efficiency of the Among the five different types of dc-dc
converter is improved by the coupled inductor converter SEPIC converter is proposed to convert
because it needs only lesser amount of magnetic core. the DC current from the solar panel to load in this
The SEPIC converter and their various control work. Because buck converter can decrease the
strategies has been discussed and simulated using voltage and boost converter can raise the voltage.
Simulink/MATLAB software. Both CUK and buck-boost converter cause large
amount of electrical stress on the components,
Keywords- Solar energy, SEPIC Converter, which can results in failure of devices or
Maximum Power Point Tracking. overheating. In order to overcome this above
problem, SEPIC converter is used and it also gives
non-inverted output voltage and ripple free
I.INTRODUCTION continuous input and output current.

The whole world is facing a challenge to II. LITERATURE REVIEW

overcome the hurdle of energy crisis. Various
progress has been made over the last few years in The proposed implementation and opinion of
the research and development of renewable energy various authors are to be discussed. The design based
systems such as wind, solar and fuel generation. on connecting a pulse width modulated dc/dc SEPIC
Nowadays, solar energy is considered as one of the converter, which is controlled by a microprocessor
most reliable, daily available, and environment unit. By adjusting the switching frequency of the
friendly renewable energy sources. Since it is a converter maximum power point has been achieved
[1]. The dc/dc MPPT circuit using chaotic pulse width
natural source and no need any maintenance.
modulation is used to track the maximum power from
Photovoltaic (PV) modules are used to solar PV module for space application. By using
converting the solar energy into electrical energy. CPWM as a control scheme, the conversion
The solar modules are developed by the efficiency of the MPPT system is increased [2].The
arrangement of solar cells in series and parallel. modified incremental conductance algorithm that
responds accurately when the solar irradiation
However, the solar panel output is always non-
increases. This algorithm shows zero oscillation in the
linear. MPPT technique is implemented to obtain power of PV module after the maximum power point
maximum power from the solar cell array (SCA). It is tracked [3]. The SEPIC converter has been
is used to control only the panel outputs, and
correlate to the battery voltage. Then it will

1
compared with the conventional boost converter algorithm MPPT devices are typically integrated into
about reducing the input current ripple [4]. The an electric power converter system that provides
maximum power point tracker for solar PV panel that voltage or current conversion, filtering, and regulation
maintains the output voltage as constant irrespective for driving various loads, including power grids,
of the solar isolation level. The tracking capability has motors or batteries.
been verified experimentally with a 20 W solar panel
under a controlled setup [5]. The design with the
fuzzy logic controller that uses the convergent
distribution of the membership function. The fuzzy
controller for the SEPIC MPPT scheme shows the
voltage without any changes in different load
conditions at the inverter load side [6].

III. PROPOSED SYSTEM

This proposed work focuses on SEPIC dc-dc
converter as voltage level control using P&O MPPT
method for solar PV systems.
Fig. 2 Single diode model of PV cell
The solar power which can be collected from solar
cell cannot be utilized directly. It is usually stored in Where I is the current source, RSH is the shunt
the battery and inverter circuit and further it can be resistance and RS is the series resistance. RSH is very
used as AC supply. Moreover, the output voltage as large compared with Rs and has a negligible effect in
well as power from the solar cell depends upon the the output current. The output current from the
illumination and intensity of the light. If the light
photovoltaic array is
intensity is very low it may produce very low output
voltage. The smaller output voltage from the solar cell
may not charge the battery and the power is wasted.
I = Isc – Id (1)
Here an intermediate stage of converter called SEPIC
is used to boost the lower output voltage from the
solar cell and it also buck the voltage if the light Id = Io (eqVd/kT - 1) (2)
intensity is huge.
BLOCK DIAGRAM Where Io is the reverse saturation diode current, q is
the charge of electron, Vd is the voltage across the
diode, k is the Boltzmann constant (1.38 * 10-19 J/K)
SOLAR SEPIC
BATTERY and T is the junction temperature in Kelvin (K).

I = Isc – Io (eqVd/ kT - 1) (3)

MPPT LOAD
Using suitable approximations,
Fig.1. Block diagram of proposed system

In this system, a prototype SEPIC converter is I = Isc – Io (eq (V + IRs/ nkT) - 1) (4)
designed to charge the battery from the solar panel. In
this solar cells, a number of PV modules are arranged Where, I is the current of photovoltaic cell, V is the
in series and parallel to meet the desired energy voltage of PV cell, T is the temperature (in Kelvin)
requirements. Solar cells have a difficult relationship and n is the diode ideality factor. In order to model
between solar irradiation, temperature and total the solar panel accurately two diode model is used.
resistance that produces a non-linear output efficiency
which can be discussed based on the I-V curve. P&O

2
 Fig.4SEPIC operation
MODE 1 OPERATION:

In this operation, when the MOSFET is ON the

Fig.3.1VI characteristics of solar PV panel input inductor is supplied by the input voltage Vin and
inductor 2 is charged by the capacitor 1. The diode is
The VI characteristics of solar PV panel are OFF and the output is maintained by the capacitor 2.
shown in fig3. The PV characteristics are obtained by
the voltage and power characteristics as shown in MODE 2 OPERATION:
fig4. When the MOSFET is off, the inductor output
through the diode to the load and the capacitors are
charged. In this mode output voltage will be more
because the inductors charge are longer.

V.MPPT UNIT
MPPT algorithms are changing due to simplicity,
efficiency, tracking speed, sensor required and cost. It
is viewed that the V-I characteristics of the solar
module is nonlinear and extremely affected by the
Fig.3.2.PV characteristics of solar PV panel
temperature and solar irradiation. The output power
of solar module is maximized, it has to be operated at
IV. SEPIC CONVERTER fixed value of load resistance. It needs a separate
power converter circuit for the MPPT. In this design,
SEPIC converter operate by rapidly turning on a SEPIC type DC-DC converter is used to extract the
and off a MOSFET, generally with a high frequency maximum power from solar module.
pulse. It consists of a MOSFET switch with duty
Perturb and Observe (P&O) is one of the popular
cycle D, a diode, two inductors L1 and L2, two
algorithm due to its simplicity used for tracking
capacitors C1 and C2 and a load resistor. The
maximum power point. In this algorithm, voltage and
optimum SEPIC converter have low component
current sensing are based to track MPP. In this
stresses, low energy storage requirements and it
controller require calculation for power and voltage to
provides non inverted output not like the
track MPP. In this voltage is perturbed in one
conventional boost or the buck converter, the SEPIC
direction and if power is continuous to increase then
also has minimal active components to reduce the
algorithm keep on perturb in same direction. It is an
switching losses.
iterative approach that perturbs the operation point of

3
the PV system, in order to find the direction of change Simulations have been performed to confirm
for maximizing the power. It is achieved by forcing the analysis. Below fig.6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 shows the
the derivative of the power equal to zero under simulation result of SEPIC converter and SEPIC
feedback control. This has the merit of not requiring converter with MPPT method.
the solar panel characteristics.

Fig.6.1 Output voltage wave form of SEPIC converter.

Fig.5.Flowchart of P&O algorithm

The flowchart of this method is shown in fig.6. It

is based on the comparison of change in power and
voltage. PV output voltage and PV output current are
sensed in this algorithm. Then the power is calculated
and compared with the power value calculated in
previous sample in order to get ∆P. If ∆P>0, then
the operation continues in the same direction of
perturbation, if not it reverses the perturbation
direction. It follows the same way in next cycle. Fig.6.2 Simulink diagram of SEPIC converter using MPPT
method.

VI. SIMULATION RESULTS

Fig.6.Simulink diagram of SEPIC converter Fig.6.3 output voltage of SEPIC converter with solar PV
panel.

4
 VII.CONCLUSION power point tracker for PV panels
using SEPIC converter, Tele
This paper has successfully developed communications Energy
Conference,2007, sept.30-oct
the design of SEPIC converter for solar
PV system. The modelling and simulation
of P&O MPPT algorithm was
implemented using MATLAB/Simulink
software. The simulation result proves that
the P&O MPPT with SEPIC shows the
simple structure.

REFERENCES
[1] S. Ganesh, J.Janani and G.Besliya
Angel,” A Maximum Power Point
Tracker for PV Panels Using SEPIC
Converter” IJEREC Vol:8 No:2,2014
[2] Maglin J.R, Ramesh.R and
Vaigundamoorthy.M, ” Design and
Analysis of SEPIC Converter for
Solar PV Module with CPWM” Vol:9
No:742,2014
[3] Sangeetha .S and Jitha Joseph,”
Design and Implementation of SEPIC
Converter Based PV system using
Modified Incremental conductance
Algorithm” IEEE vol:5 No:1,2016
[4] M.R.Banaei, M.R.Shirinabady and
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Photovoltaic using SEPIC converter
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ISSN Vol:4 No:1,2014
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