Homemade PV panel boost converter with MPPT¶
This site is about building a homemade PV panel boost converter. The schematics can be found on GitHub.
Index¶
Market analysis¶
The market analysis shows the overal used voltage and current on currently available PV panels. The homemade PV boost converter should cover about 90% of the panels available. The study showed that modules in the range of 200W-300W with 40Voc should be used.
As telecom power supply usually operate on 48V, those can be used as reference design.
Output voltage¶
The SMPS should output a voltage that can be used to drive arbitrary SMPS in the household. I first thought about using 400VDC, to be able to connect DC-AC sine inverter to AC mains, but a voltage of 240VDC would allow the use of resistive consumers, like heatings, too.
As design choice the MPPT should generate 240VDC.
Feeding power back to AC main grid can still be achieved using series connection of the SMPS outputs, which would result in 480VDC.
SMPS converter choice¶
As the output voltage is way higher than the input voltage, galvanic isolation should be used to prevent damage to the panel on failing parts (like a boost diode).
It also might be desireable to completly shutdown the SMPS, which isn’t possible for a boost converter design.
Using a Push-Pull approach, which is galvanic isolated, also reduces the input current ripple, compared to a boost converter, and thus reduces EMI.