Investigations on single stage solar powered reduced order dc dc sepic converter

Abstract

In recent years, the commercial and residential applications have undergone drastic changes with the usage of more electronic loads using Renewable Energy Systems (RES). It is expected that in the near future, the majority of householders will have RES, connected to the utility grid. Therefore decentralized Renewable Energy (RE) solutions are being deployed to address the power scarcity in rural areas. Thus, it is essential to tackle the energy crisis through judicious utilization of abundant renewable energy resources such as wind and solar energies. Solar energy is chosen here as a source due to the following advantages; it is a clean renewable energy source with zero emission and has got tremendous potential energy which can be harnessed using a variety of devices easily available for industrial and domestic applications with an added advantage of minimum maintenance and zero recurring cost. Even though the solar energy is richly available throughout the world, the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) of PV system is a significant factor to attain higher conversion. Incremental Conductance (IC) based MPPT method is used here. Many factors have to be considered for the selection of DC-DC converter; Cost, flexibility, efficiency and energy flow. Among the existing DC-DC converters, DC-DC Single Ended Primary Inductance Converter (SEPIC) is extensively used due to its non-inverted output voltage. Moreover, it does not need filter at the source and load sides. To improve the speed of response, it is necessary to have a closed loop control system. In the closed loop control of the proposed converter, the sensing of four state variables are necessary which results in complexity in the controller design and furthermore, it requires more number of sensors newline