A four stage battery charge controller working on a novel maximum power point tracking based algorithm for solar PV system

Batteries are used as power storage device in solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. They supply power when there is no solar power generation in the absence of sunlight. Charge controllers are used to charge the batteries safely following the proper charge procedure and an efficient charge controller should have the ability to extract as much power as possible from PV module to charge the batteries. This paper points out the limitation of commonly used maximum power point tracking (MPPT) based battery charge controller used in photovoltaic systems. A newly developed battery charge controller has been developed that retains the good characteristics and resolves the limitations of the commonly used charge controllers. The developed controller is based on a newly developed MPPT technique which enables very fast maximum power point (MPP) catch. This is a four stage controller which brings the battery voltage to full charge in a short time. The experimental result shows that, the new charge controller tracks the MPP faster than the commonly used controllers do. Moreover, the MPPT accuracy of the proposed charge controller is high and the steady state oscillation error around the target MPP is also minimum.