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Sustainable Buildings and Cities IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 353 (2018) 012024 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/353/1/012024
1234567890‘’“”

Implementation of Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT)

Solar Charge Controller using Arduino

B Abdelilah1*, A Mouna1,2, N KouiderM’Sirdi2, A El Hossain1

1
Laboratoire Signaux ,Système et composants(LSSC). FST. Fès. Maroc.
2
Laboratoire des Sciences de l’information et des systèmes(LSIS). AMU France.

Email: [email protected]

Abstract─ the platform Arduino with a number of sensors standard can be used as components
of an electronic system for acquiring measures and controls. This paper presents the design of a
low-cost and effective solar charge controller. This system includes several elements such as
the solar panel converter DC/DC, battery, circuit MPPT using Microcontroller, sensors, and the
MPPT algorithm. The MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracker) algorithm has been
implemented using an Arduino Nano with the preferred program. The voltage and current of
the Panel are taken where the program implemented will work and using this algorithm that
MPP will be reached. This paper provides details on the solar charge control device at the
maximum power point. The results include the change of the duty cycle with the change in
load and thus mean the variation of the buck converter output voltage and current controlled by
the MPPT algorithm.

Keywords ─ Solar Energy, MPPT, Charge controller, Arduino Nano, Battery.

1. Introduction
Global demand for energy is rapidly evolving and natural energy resources such as uranium,
petroleum, and gas decreased due to a great diffusion and development of the industry in recent years.
The increase in energy costs and environmental constraints are pushing for the development of
technological solutions allowing better control of the resources and the exploitation of the renewable
energies in specific photovoltaic energy. Photovoltaic energy is a clean and renewable energy
resource. Moreover, solar panels are a silent energy producer because there is absolutely no noise
when converting sunlight into electricity [1].
In order to exploit solar energy to power the DC loads and to store electricity, a solar charge controller
is needed to monitor the State of charge of the batteries and protect them from overcharging and full
discharge (deep discharge). This monitoring and this permanent protection help to extend significantly
the performance and life of the batteries. This controller is used in many areas such as systems not
connected to the electric network, ensure the autonomy of an embedded system, monitor solar
installations...

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Sustainable Buildings and Cities IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 353 (2018) 012024 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/353/1/012024
1234567890‘’“”

This paper includes an MPPT circuit in order to extract the maximum power from the solar panel
using the algorithm P & O (perturbation & Observation) and the DC /DC Converter.

2. Proposed system
The block diagram shown in figure 1 represents the complete system. It contains a solar panel, DC-DC
buck converter, Arduino Nano, battery, and Loads. The solar panel is used to generate the current and
voltage from which the voltage will be converted by a DC-DC converter. After calculating the power
from the data transmitted by the current and voltage sensors, we use perturb and observe algorithm to
reach the maximum power point.

Figure 1. Block diagram of the whole system

2.1 DC-DC Buck Converter

The buck converter produces a lower average output voltage than DC input voltage for charging the
battery and supplying the DC loads. The DC-DC buck converter circuit is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. DC-DC Buck converter

After designing the buck converter, we need to find the values of the inductor and the capacitor. It is
most critical part as the efficiency of the converter depends on these values. For a solar panel of 60W
and a 12V battery, the value of the inductance L = 33uH and the capacitance value C = 220uF, [2].

2.2 MPPT Algorithm

Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) algorithms are needed to maximize the power output at any
moment. Many MPPT techniques have been proposed in the literature. In this controller, we chose
worked with the method perturb and observe due to its easy implementation. It uses the P-V

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Sustainable Buildings and Cities IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 353 (2018) 012024 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/353/1/012024
1234567890‘’“”

characteristics P = f (V) of the PV module shown in fi gure 3. Note that the point of maximum power P
(n) =V (n) I (n) is obtained when the condition = 0 is accomplished, regardless of the solar
irradiance,[3]. In this work polycrystalline Silicon panel is used. Electrical characteristics of the PV
Panel (Values at STC (AM1.5, 1000W/m², 25°C))
- Maximum Power (Pmax): 60W
- Open-circuit voltage (Voc): 26.4V
- Short-circuit Current (Isc): 3.00A
- Maximum Power Voltage (Vmp):22.0V
- Maximum Power Current (Imp):2.73A
- Tolerance (Tol): +3/-3%
F
i
gure 3. P-V characteristic curve
Ppv = f (V) of PV modules

The figure 4 shows the Flowchart of the Perturb and Observe method.

Figure 4. The flowchart of the P&O method

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Sustainable Buildings and Cities IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 353 (2018) 012024 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/353/1/012024
1234567890‘’“”

3. Experimental Results
A prototype was built using various electronic components, this prototype was tested block by block
before the realization of the global circuit. The DC-DC converter is the most critical part, the
experimental results are presented in figure 6. The LCD screen was used to display the results
obtained. The observations ahead show the results of the hardware implementation.

Figure 5. Hardware Prototype

3.1 Buck Converter

In order to verify the design efficiency of the solar charge controller system, an experimental DC-DC
Buck converter was built. The PV array was replaced by a battery of 12V. The PWM signal was
generated with Arduino Nano board.

The output voltage can be controlled by the duty cycle with the following expression:
Figure 6 shows the PWM signal and the output voltage of the DC-DC converter for the different Duty
cycle.

Figure 6. a) Output voltage of the DC-DC converter and the PWM signal with a duty cycle equal to 0.5 and b)
Output voltage of the DC-DC converter and the PWM signal with a duty cycle equal to 0.5

3.2 Charge Controller

Table 1, shows the experimental results of the solar charge controller. It has four states on, off, bulk
and float, details of the four states are shown in the table below.

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Sustainable Buildings and Cities IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 353 (2018) 012024 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/353/1/012024
1234567890‘’“”

Table 1. Charge controller results

State conditions required result observations

sol_power > Low_sol_power Load On

ON & &
sol_power < Min_sol_power Battery charging
On

OFF solar watts < Load On

Low_SOL_WATTS &
Battery charging
Off

Bulk solar watts > Load On

MIN_SOL_WATTS &
& Battery charging
bat_volts < BATT_FLOAT Bulk

Float bat_volts > BATT_FLOAT Load On

&
Battery charging
Float

ON State - the solar watts input is between the low and minimum solar power but not low enough to
go into the off state. In this state, the Load turns OFF and the Battery charging turns ON.
OFF State - The charger controller goes into this state when there is no more power being generated
by the solar panels. In this state, the Battery charging turns OFF and the Load turns ON if the battery
voltage is higher than the minimum value.
BULK State – The Solar energy is greater than the minimum value. This is where we do the bulk of
the battery charging and when we execute the Peak Power Tracking algorithm. In this state, we try to
run the maximum current that the solar panels generate for the battery. The Load turns ON and the
Battery charging goes into the Bulk state.
FLOAT State – the battery voltage gets to the maximum Value. In this state, we try and keep the
battery voltage at maximum by adjusting the PWM value. The Load is turned ON and the Battery
charging goes into the Float state.

4. Conclusion

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Sustainable Buildings and Cities IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 353 (2018) 012024 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/353/1/012024
1234567890‘’“”

The realization of this solar charge controller using Arduino was done at low cost but effective for
small DC loads, and we can use this controller to implement other algorithms or to make comparisons.
This paper contains a battery charging system for laboratory using a direct connection between the
photovoltaic solar panel and the battery system. With the help of this charge controller, the authors
used solar power effectively and prolonged battery lifetime. In this paper, we have presented the
experimental results using the LCD display (panel power, state of charge of the battery, state of the
charge controller, duty cycle ....).
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to give very special thanks to Debasish Dutta. As I have learned and used
several things from her project.

5. References

[1]. W. Makni, N. Ben hadj, H.Samet, R.Neji, Design simulation and realization of solar battery
charge controller using Arduino Uno, a 17th international conference on Sciences and
Techniques of Automatic control & computer engineering- STA'2016, Sousse, Tunisia,
December 19-21, 2016.
[2]. ON Semiconductor, LC Selection Guide for the DC-DC Synchronous Buck Converter,
AND9135/D.
[3]. N K. M’Sirdi, B. Nehme, M. Abarkan, A. Rabhi, The Best MPPT Algorithms by VSAS
approach for Renewable Energy Sources (RES), conference paper EFEA 2014, PARIS.
[4]. M. Pathare, V. Shetty, Designing and Implementation of Maximum Power Point
Tracking(MPPT) Solar Charge Controller, 2017 International Conference on Nascent
Technologies in the Engineering Field (ICNTE-2017).
[5]. N. Barua, A. Dutta, S. Chakma, Implementation of Cost-effective MPPT Solar Photovoltaic
System Based on the Comparison between Incremental Conductance and P&O Algorithm,
2016 IEEE International WIE Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering
(WIECON-ECE) 19-21 December 2016, India.
[6]. A. Chandwani, A. Kothari, Design, Simulation and Implementation of Maximum Power Point
Tracking (MPPT) for solar based Renewable Systems, 2016 International Conference on
Electrical Power and Energy Systems (ICEPES). Dec 14-16, 2016.
[7]. T. Kaur, J. Gambhir, S. Kumar, Arduino Based Solar Powered Battery Charging System for
Rural SHS, Power Electronics (IICPE), 7th 2016 India International Conference.