Energy Management for Solar Battery Charging Station

This paper presents a new system architecture for a low cost photovoltaic (PV) battery charging station that can balance: 1) the charging time of each individual battery and 2) the total charging time of all batteries in the system. The control strategy for the new system first charges each individual battery to either the same voltage or same state of charge (SOC) level and then charges multiple batteries in parallel simultaneously. As the paper demonstrates, this method can increase solar energy exploitation so that the total charging time of all batteries is decreased. Experimental results of a prototype of the system validate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.