Design and Implementation of 12V/24V Closed

loop Boost Converter for Solar Powered LED

Lighting System
P.Sathya
1
, Dr.R.Natarajan
2

1
Assistant Professor, School of Electronics Engineering, VIT University, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India
2
Professor, School of Mechanical and Building Sciences, VIT University, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India
1
[email protected]
2
[email protected]
Abstract this paper presents the design and implementation of high performance closed loop Boost
converter for solar powered HBLED lighting system. The proposed system consists of solar photovoltaic
module, a closed loop boost converter and LED lighting module. The closed loop boost converter is used
to convert a low level dc input voltage from solar PV module to a high level dc voltage required for the
load. To regulate the output of the converter, closed loop voltage feedback technique is used. The
feedback voltage is compared with a reference voltage and a control signal is generated and amplified.
The amplified signal is fed to 555 Timer which in turn generates a PWM signal which controls the
switching of MOSFET. Thus by switching of MOSFET it would try to keep output as constant. Initially
the boost converter, timer circuit, amplifier circuit and LED light circuits are designed, simulated and
finally implemented in printed circuit board. The simulation studies are carried out in MULTISIM. The
experimental results for solar PV and boost converter obtained in both software and hardware are
presented here.
Keywords- Solar Photovoltaic (SPV), PWM, boost converter, MOSFET switching, HBLED light
I. INTRODUCTION
Renewable energy sources play an important role in electricity generation. People are finding the benefits of
having their own renewable energy system more attractive than they ever had before. Specially, energy from the
sun is the best option for electricity generation as it is available everywhere and is free to harness. The merits of
solar PV system are cleanness, relative lack of noise or movement, as well as their ease of installation and
integration when compared to others. On an average the sunshine hour in India is about 6hrs annually also the
sun shine shines in India for about 9 months in a year. Electricity from the sun can be generated through the
solar photovoltaic modules (SPV). The SPV comes in various power output to meet the load. However, the
output power of a PV panel is largely determined by the solar irradiation and the temperature of the panel. At a
certain weather condition, the output power of a PV panel depends on the terminal voltage of the system. To
maximize the power output of the PV system, a high efficiency, low-cost DC/DC converter with a voltage
feedback signal is commonly employed to control the terminal voltage of the PV system at optimal values in
various solar radiation conditions.
Lighting is an essential requirement for any facility and to carry out our daily work round the clock. LED
light consumes very less power and its life time is also high. Hence, in this project to conserve energy HBLED
lights are used along with electric power generation using solar PV.
II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Literature collected from different journals, conference papers and books has been reviewed as follows.
A boost converter is designed to step up a fluctuating or variable input voltage to a constant output voltage of
24 volts with input range of 6-23volts in [1]. To produce a constant output voltage feedback loop is used. The
output voltage is compared with a reference voltage and a PWM wave is generated, here PIC16F877
microcontroller is used to generate PWM signal to control switching action.
A DC to DC converter is used to step up from 12V to 24V in [2]. The 12V input voltage is from the battery
storage equipment and the 24V output voltage serves as the input of the inverter in solar electric system. In
designing process, the switching frequency, f is set at 20 kHz and the duty cycle, D is 50%. The tool that has
been used for circuit simulation and validation are National Instrument Multisim and OrCAD software.
Here author introduced an approach to design a boost converter for photovoltaic (PV) system using
microcontroller in [3]. The converter is designed to step up solar panel voltage to a stable 24V output without
storage elements such as battery. It is controlled by a microcontroller unit using voltage-feedback technique.
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The output of the boost converter is tracked, measured continuously and the values are sent to the
microcontroller unit to produce pulse-width-modulation (PWM) signal. The PWM signal is used to control the
duty cycle of the boost converter. Typical application of this boost converter is to provide DC power supply for
inverter either for grid-connected or standalone system. Simulation and experimental results describe the
performance of the proposed design. Microcontroller PIC16F877 is used to perform tasks in the proposed
design.
This paper concerns with design and simulation of DC/DC boost converter to operate in PV system [4]. The
system has a nonlinear dynamic behavior, as it work in switch-mode. Moreover, it is exposed to significant
variations which may take this system away from nominal conditions, due to changes on the load or on the line
voltage at the input. The input is obtained by PV array. In this paper the equations of a boost converter are
analyzed and a design components and simulation of DC/DC boost converter is proposed. Here simple design
equations are used to design the components value in different modes as CCM and DCM and simulation is done
in simulink.
From the literature review it is found that mostly microcontrollers are used for generating PWM signal to
perform switching control action. In this project a simple approach is used to generate the PWM signal with high
accuracy and less cost. To improve the output power of solar PV panel a low cost DC/DC closed loop boost
converter is designed. The load used is high brightness white LED which has many advantages like long life
span, speed of response, high efficacy, less power consumption and high directionality. The performance the
whole system is verified by simulation in NI-Multisim (version-11) and then implemented in hardware.
III. THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

Fig. 1 Block diagram of the proposed system
The block diagram shown above consists of a PV panel, dc-dc boost converter and LED lights as load. The
proposed standalone PV controller implementation takes into account mathematical model of each component
as well as actual component specification. The dcdc converter is the front-end component connected between
the PV array and the load.
Solar PV Panel:
The PV array which we used is made up of mono-crystalline fiber. It has two layer one is very thick and
another is very thin. The array used here contains thick n layer. An array contains 36 cells and each cell can
produce maximum of 0.5 volts thus maximum of 18 volts can be extracted from a PV panel. The output of the
array varies from 12 to 18 volts for different values of load. The used solar panel is shown in Fig.2.

Fig. 2 Various parts of the solar panel used for the project
DC-DC Boost Converter:
The dc-dc boost converters are used to convert the unregulated dc input to a controlled dc output at a desired
voltage level. They generally perform the conversion by applying a dc voltage across an inductor or transformer
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for a period of time (usually in the 20 kHz to 5 MHz range) which causes current to flow through it and store
energy magnetically, then switching this voltage off and causing the stored energy to be transferred to the
voltage output in a controlled manner. The output voltage is regulated by adjusting the ratio of on/off time. This
is achieved using switched-mode, or chopper, circuits whose elements dissipate negligible power. Pulse-width
modulation (PWM) allows control and regulation of the total output voltage. It is considered as the heart of the
power supply, thus it will affect the overall performance of the power supply system. The ideal converter
exhibits 100% efficiency; in practice, efficiencies of 70% to 95% are typically obtained.

Fig. 3 Schematic of Boost converter
The dc-dc boost converter shown in fig.3 is operated in two modes.
Mode-1: When the MOSFET switch is in ON state (closed), the whole circuit will be divided into two loops one
at the output side and another at the input side. The closed loop at input consisting of inductor gets charged by
the current flowing through the loop during this period. This current will increase linearly till the time the switch
is in closed condition. In the same time interval, inductor voltage is also high as it is not delivered to any load
but to itself. Diode is off during this mode. The equivalent circuit representation of mode 1 is shown in fig.4.

Fig. 4 Equivalent circuit of mode 1
Mode-2: When the switch is in OFF state (Open), there will be a closed loop consisting of power source,
inductor and RC load. The energy stored in the inductor during ON state is discharged to the RC load circuit
through the diode. Thus inductor current is reducing linearly, charging the capacitor at the load side. The
equivalent circuit for mode 2 is shown in fig.5.

Fig. 5 Equivalent circuit of mode 2
Thus for closed switch time inductor gets charged and capacitor is delivering the required power to the load,
and for the opened switch time inductor will discharge supplying the full power to load and charging capacitor
simultaneously.
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IV. DESIGN APPROACH
Load Requirement:
The load is a simple 4 x 4 LED panel and each row containing 4 LED in a line would require a current of 10-
15 mA and thus total of 60 mA to all four branches and thus having a resistance of 570. As each LED gives a
drop of 2.1 volts to become forward biased, so a minimum of 8.4 volts is required to glow 4 LED in series, for
this a voltage of 24 V is required to be supplied to LEDs. Thus the load requirement is 570 with 42 mA of
total current thus required voltage was 24 V. Since a potential divider is used whose total resistance is 1100 so
total equivalent resistance is R
eq
= (1100) (570) = 375.Based on this load requirement the other parameters
would be calculated and the specifications are tabulated in the following table.
TABLE I
Specifications





Duty Cycle:
The duty cycle can be found using the following relation

Inductor value:
The value of inductor is determined using the following relation

An inductor is practically designed using the following parameters and is shown in the figure 6.
Formula for inductor design, L = (d
2
n
2
) / (l + 0.45d)
Required dimensions of inductor
Coil length, l= 8.1 cm
Diameter, d= 6.3 cm
Inductance value required, L= 151 H
Number of turns, n=64
Where L is inductance in micro Henrys,
d is coil diameter in meters,
l is coil length in meters, and
n is number of turns


Fig.6 Practically designed Inductor
Capacitor value:
The value of capacitor is determined from the following equation

Where
PARAMETER VALUE UNIT
Input voltage, V
in
10-18 Volts
Output voltage, V
out
24 Volts
Output current, I
out
42 mA
Ripple, r .0125 %
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C is the minimum value of capacitance,
D is duty cycle,
R is output resistance,
Fs is switching frequency, and
V
r
is output voltage ripple factor.
Design of differential amplifier:
A differential amplifier is designed using A741 with a gain of 100. Input to the non inverting terminal is
fixed equal to 9 percent of expected output and inverting terminal input other is taken from the potential divider
of boost converter. The difference between these two is amplified with a gain of 100 and the circuit is shown in
figure 7.

Fig.7 Differential amplifier
Design of PWM Generator:
The output of differential amplifier is fed to 555 Timer which in turn generates PWM signal. The PWM
signal required for switching action is with a frequency of 219 KHz and duty ratio of 50 percent. To generate a
50 percent duty cycle, the 555 timer has to work in astable mode. By connecting diode, D
1
between the trigger
input and the discharge input, the timing capacitor would charge up directly through resistor R
1
only, as resistor
R
2
is effectively shorted out by the diode. The capacitor discharges as normal through resistor, R
2
. The previous
charging time of t
1
= 0.693(R
1
+ R
2
) C is modified to take account of this new charging circuit and is given as:
0.693(R
1
.C). The duty cycle is therefore given as D = R
1
/ (R
1
+ R
2
). Then to generate a duty cycle of more than
50%, resistor R
1
needs to be equal to resistor R
2
.

Fig.8 PWM Generator
Selection of components for Hardware implementation:
A. Selection of Electronic Switch
The electronic switch (Power MOSFET) is chosen based on its voltage and current rating which have to be
higher than the maximum input voltage and current.
B. Selection of Inductor
The minimum inductance for boost converter to operate in continuous conduction mode is given in equation.
Therefore the selection of the inductor should be higher than the calculated value.
C. Selection of Diode
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Diode reverse voltage rating is the main consideration for selecting the diode. Other important consideration is
its ability to block the required offstate voltage stress and to have sufficient peak and average current handling
capability, fast switching characteristics, low reverserecovery, and low forward voltage drop.
D. Selection of Output Capacitor
The minimum capacitance for calculating ripple voltage is given above. The selection of capacitor is higher than
the calculated value. Another important consideration is its equivalent series resistance, ESR. Since the
capacitors ESR affects efficiency, low-ESR capacitors could be used for best performance. ESR could be
reduced by connecting few capacitors in parallel.
V. EXPERIMENTAL SET UP
A. PV array output measurement:

Fig. 9 Circuit diagram to find I-V and P-V curve.
The experimental set up of solar PV module to test the I-V and P-V characteristics is shown in fig.9. In order
to find various current voltage points of the PV module, a rheostat is used as load. Before proceeding the
experiment, the open circuit voltage and short circuit current of the PV module is measured. The open circuit
voltage is the voltage that is output to the cell terminals when the cell is exposed to light and there is no current
flowing between the terminals. This is also the maximum voltage that can be produced by the cell, which makes
knowing this number useful when designing a circuit or load to connect to the cell terminals. The short circuit
current is the current that will flow when the cell is under light and the terminals are shorted together. This is the
maximum current that can be output by the specific solar cell. Each individual cell is relatively little in size and
can only produce a small amount of power. The V
oc
of an individual solar cell is usually approximately 0.6 V.
The cells become much more useful when combined in an array to create a PV panel. When connected together
the cells properties add together to create an I-V curve that has the same appearance as that of an individual cell
but is larger in magnitude. The cells in an array are usually connected in series to obtain a higher and more
appropriate terminal voltage. The values obtained are shown in table II.
TABLE II
Solar PV Output Values
VOLTAGE (V) CURRENT (A) POWER (W)
20.1(open circuit) 0 0
0 0.62(short circuit) 0
11.4 0.58 6.612
13.8 0.56 7.728
17.4 0.48 8.352
17.6 0.38 6.688
18.3 0.26 4.758
18.9 0.21 3.969
19 0.12 2.28










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The corresponding characteristic graphs drawn are shown below in figure 10 and 11.

Fig. 10 I-V characteristics of solar PV module

Fig. 11 P-V characteristics of solar PV module
B. Simulation of Experimental setup

Fig. 12 DC/DC Boost converter with HBLED lighting load
A DC/DC closed loop boost converter with LED lighting load is designed in NI-Multisim (Version -11) and
simulation characteristics are verified. the input is taken from solar panel which is equivalently represented as dc
power supply in the diagram. The output of the solar panel can vary from 10 to 18 volts. So in order to regulate
the output voltage for the variation in input a closed loop voltage feedback technique is used. In which a
reference voltage is generated using a potential divider at the output of the converter. The 10 percent of total
output of the boost converter is generated by using a voltage divider and is compared to a reference voltage. A
voltage divider consists of two resistors; one resistor is 10% of another one. So the voltage generated at this
resistor is 9% of the total load voltage. This voltage is compared with a reference voltage whose value should be
9% of 24 i.e. 2.18volts (by equation X) and this difference was amplified with gain of 100 and this amplified
output will drive 555 timer, thereby generating a PWM wave of 50 percent duty cycle. The output of the 555
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timer is fed to the gate terminal of the power MOSFET. This pulse in turn will control the switching of the
MOSFET based on its switching frequency; here it is designed for a switching frequency of 219 kHz. Thus
when pulse is at high level the MOSFET would be in saturation mode there by making switch ON condition.
When pulse is at low level the MOSFET would be in cutoff mode of operation and thereby making switch open
i.e. switch OFF condition. Whenever input to converter becomes low the output also becomes low and duty
cycle gets increased and tries to keep output constant. When input to converter increases the output increases
and duty cycle of timer decreases and tries to bring output at the previous level. Thus closed loop operation
regulated the output voltage against the variations in input voltage ranging from 10 to 18 volts.
C.Analysis of Circuit and Result:
Analysis of the circuit is carried out based on the following assumptions. The circuit is ideal. It means when
the switch is ON, the drop across it is zero and the current through it is zero when it is open. The diode has zero
voltages drop in the conducting state and zero current in the reverse-bias mode. The time delays in switching on
and off the switch and the diode are assumed to be negligible. The inductor and the capacitor are assumed to be
lossless.
The responses in the circuit are periodic. It means especially that the inductor current is periodic. Its value at
the start and end of a switching cycle is the same. The net increase in inductor current over a cycle is zero. If it
is non-zero, it would mean that the average inductor current should either be gradually increasing or decreasing
and then the inductor current is in a transient state and has not become periodic. The voltage across the inductor
and linear variation of current through inductor are shown in figure 13.

Fig.13 Waveform of Inductor current and Inductor voltage
It is assumed that the switch is made ON and OFF at a fixed frequency and let the period corresponding to the
switching frequency is T. Given that the duty cycle is D, the switch is on for a period equal to DT, and the
switch is off for a time interval equal to (1 - D)T. The inductor current is continuous and is greater than zero.
Here the triangular waveform is inductor current and square waveform is voltage across inductor.
The capacitor is relatively large. The RC time constant is so large, that the changes in capacitor voltage when
the switch is ON or OFF can be neglected for calculating the change in inductor current and the average output
voltage. The average output voltage is assumed to remain steady, excepting when the change in output voltage is
calculated.
The output voltage comes constant to 23.6 volts for various levels of inputs and current is 50.832 mA which
is shown in fig.14. Whenever output voltage becomes more than 24 volts the differential amplifier will generate
a negative saturation level voltage signal which will increase the duty cycle and so output would come down to
24 volts. And when output becomes less than 24 volts the differential amplifier will generate a more positive
level of voltage signal which in turn would reduce the duty cycle and thereby increasing the voltage to 24 volts.
Thus how output voltage is kept constant.

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Fig.14 Waveform of output current and voltage
D.Hardware Implementation:
The complete closed loop boost converter with LED lighting load is developed as hardware in real time. The
experimental setup consisting of input from solar PV module, closed loop dc/dc converter and HBLED lighting
load is tested in the ZealTech work bench. The work bench consists of embedded power supply units, ac and dc
meters for measuring current and voltage, signal generator and cathode ray oscilloscope. The hardware is tested
at various levels for a given input voltage variation. The observed results in both hardware and software
simulation are compared and shown in table III. The expected output is 24 volts and in software it is coming
23.6 volts while in hardware it is getting regulated to 22.76 volts.
TABLE III
Closed Loop Boost Converter Output
V
in
(Volts)

V
out
(Volts)
(Simulation)
V
out
( Volts)
(Hardware)
10 23.6 22.46
11 23.6 22.77
12 23.6 22.80
13 23.6 22.81
14 23.6 22.80
15 23.6 22.80
16 23.6 22.79
17 23.6 22.81
18 23.6 22.80
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Fig.15 PCB view of Boost Converter and load in Multisim

Fig.16 Prototype Board

Fig.17 Experimental Hardware setup in workbench
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VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper a low cost high performance DC-DC closed loop boost converter has been proposed. The
proposed system used solar PV as the input and HBLED as the output which conserves the power. The complete
system has been designed and simulated in Multisim which resulted in an efficiency of 98.33%. A laboratory
prototype board has been built and experimentally tested for the input voltage ranging from (10-18)V. For the
specified input variation, a regulated dc output voltage of 22.76V has been obtained resulting in an efficiency of
95%.
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