An efficient soft switching buck converter scheme for charging lead acid battery from PV source

In this paper, a high efficiency soft switched two channel interleaved buck converter scheme for charging a lead acid battery bank is presented. This scheme uses the incremental conductance (INC) maximum power point tracking (MPPT). An internal model control system (IMC) is used for controlling the charging of the battery in the constant current mode, constant voltage mode, and trickle mode depending upon the state of charge (SOC) of the battery. Various subsystems of simulation and the results are presented. The simulation results are validated experimentally by using a 125 W photovoltaic (PV) panel unit and a 36 A H lead acid battery. The real time experiment is performed under climatic conditions of Madurai which is a city located in Tamil Nadu, India. The result of the proposed system has been compared against the Perturb and observe MPPT scheme. The results of both simulation and the experiment reveal that the proposed soft switched, internal model controller incorporated INC scheme of MPPT offers more close tracking of the PV power and is more efficient. Published by AIP Publishing.