Session S3B

Work in Progress - A Solar Powered Battery Charger for a Hybrid Electric Vehicle
Wayne Lu, Zia A. Yamayee, Andrew Melton, Antoinette Realica, John Turner
School of Engineering University of Portland Portland, Oregon Abstract Scarcity and cost of fossil fuels combined with their greenhouse gas emissions make the development of non-fossil fuel based methods of transportation a highpriority task. In this paper, we present the results of an innovative senior design project at the University of Portland. The project is to design an intelligent battery charger controller so that solar energy can be used as an additional energy source for hybrid automobiles using gasoline and electricity. The design idea is implemented and tested. The experimental project successfully demonstrates the feasibility of boosting a solar panel generated low voltage (24 V) energy source to a desired high voltage (150 V) for charging a battery pack. The result demonstrates that solar energy can be used as an additional clean energy source for hybrid automobiles. THE SENIOR DESIGN PROGRAM The capstone senior design program at the University of Portland is a year-long sequence consisting of two 3-credit hour courses; Senior Design Project Preparation and Senior Design Project. The year-long design sequence is a departmental course involving a faculty instructor, the entire electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) faculty members as faculty advisors, and industry professionals as Industry Representatives. The EECS senior students submit their design proposals to the instructor at the beginning of fall semester. The EECS faculty reviews each project proposal and assigns the team members (typically 3 students) when it is approved. A faculty advisor and an industry representative are then assigned to each team. The design team works with their advisor and industry representative on three milestone documents in the fall semester: Functional Specifications, Project Plan, and Design Review. In the spring semester, they work on two milestone documents: Theory of Operations and Prototype Release. Each team needs to hold a weekly meeting with their faculty advisor and email a summary of weekly activities to their instructor and advisor. Each team also needs to present their progress in a monthly program review meeting. Each milestone document needs to be approved by both the faculty advisor and industry representative through an approval meeting. Each team should complete and test their project by the first week of April. They present the results to all EECS students and faculty, industry representatives, students families, and other invited guests during Founders Day Presentations in mid-April. PROJECT SCOPES AND CONSTRAINTS This project seeks to expand the technology of alternative energy source for hybrid vehicles. To make it a manageable lab-based project, the power system of the hybrid vehicle needs to be properly modeled and design constraints properly established. I. System Modeling Due to the difficulty of acquiring the actual power sources and loads of a hybrid automobile such as working car alternators, regenerative braking systems, vehicle battery pack, and solar panel system, the project models the pre-existing vehicle battery charging system as a power control unit and the load as a Vehicle Battery. The solar energy source is modeled as a solar panel charged Intermediate Battery consisting of two 12 V lead acid batteries and the Vehicle Battery is modeled as a battery pack consisting of eleven 12 V lead acid batteries. II. Long-Term System Ruggedness Adequate research and implementation of a rugged device capable of extreme operating conditions over hundreds of thousands of miles and several years is a project in itself. For this reason, this project will be a laboratory-based experimental project rather than an actually mounted product on a vehicle. SYSTEM DESIGN The project consists of two key components: a boost converter and a microcontroller. The boost converter steps up the 24 V input from the Intermediate Battery to the desired 150V to charge the Vehicle Battery when the microcontroller detects that the preexisting power control unit is not operational while the Vehicle Battery needs charging and there is enough stored solar energy in the Intermediate Battery. I. Continuous mode boost converter The continuous mode boost converter [1] steps up the Intermediate Battery voltage from 24 V to 150 V for charging the Vehicle Battery at a constant 0.5A of current. It consists of an N-channel

1-4244-1084-3/07/$25.00 2007 IEEE October 10 13, 2007, Milwaukee, WI 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference S3B-13

Session S3B
MOSFET, a low-side N-Channel controller LM3488, an inductor, capacitors, and a diode. The MOSFET acts as a switch that connects the inductor to ground when the MOSFET gate voltage is driven high. It then discharges the inductor through the diode until the next switching cycle. The gate voltage is determined by a PWM (pulse width modulation) signal generated by the LM3488 [2]. The overall operation is to load energy into the inductor in the MOSFET ON stage and quickly unload the stored energy to charge the output capacitor in the MOSFET OFF stage. This fast energy transfer process delivers nearly constant DC output voltage to the load. II. Microcontroller The Microchip Programmable Integrated Circuit PIC18F452 8-bit microcontroller is used as the system manager. Its functions are: 1) to monitor the voltage values from the pre-existing power unit and the Intermediate Battery; 2) to enable/disable the boost converter based on the status of the voltage sensors; 3) to control the power select relay; and 4) to display system operating status. Figure I shows the system functional block diagram. Whenever there is output from the pre-existing power unit indicating the vehicles engine is running, the microcontroller switches the relay back to the default connection so that the pre-existing power unit can control charging the Vehicle Battery [3]. voltages and controls relays. The results demonstrate that the system successfully meet the design goals. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK In summary, the experimental project successfully demonstrates the feasibility of boosting a solar panel generated low voltage energy source to a desired high voltage for charging a battery pack. The result demonstrates that the solar energy can be used as an additional clean energy source for powering future hybrid automobiles. The encouraging experimental result also demonstrates that undergraduate students can successfully engage in innovative R&D oriented design projects. To convert the experimental project into a viable commercial product, more research efforts are needed in the areas of product ruggedness design, Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI) analysis, solar panel technology, power efficiency analysis between MOSFET and IGBT, switching loss analysis of using SiC (silicon carbide) Schottky diode, and conversion efficiency study of boost, interleaving boost, ZVS PWM boost, fly-back, and forward converter methods. Future senior design projects will be pursued to tackle some of these topics and concerns. REFERENCE [1] [2] Mohan, N., First Course on Power Electronics, Year 2005 Edition, MNPERE, Minneapolis, 2005. LM3488 High Efficiency Low-Side N-Channel Controller for Switching Regulators datasheet, National Semiconductor, 2003. LM3647 Universal battery Charger for Li-Ion, Ni-MH and Ni-Cd Batteries datasheet, National Semiconductor, 2004.

[3]

FIGURE I: FUNCTIONAL BLOCK DIAGRAM EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS The Boost converter is implemented on a printed-circuit board and the other system components are constructed on a breadboard as shown in Figure 1. The 150 V Vehicle Battery Pack is discharged by a fan-cooled 133 300W power resistor network. The Intermediate Battery is initially fully charged. When there is no output from the pre-existing power unit and if there is enough charge in the Intermediate Battery, the relays are switched to allow the 24 V Intermediate Battery charge the vehicle battery through the boost converter at a constant current of 0.5 A. The project has been implemented and the test results are satisfactory. The boost converter is capable of boosting from 24 V to 150 V and has successfully charged the Vehicle Battery at 0.5A constant current. The microcontroller successfully monitors input 1-4244-1084-3/07/$25.00 2007 IEEE October 10 13, 2007, Milwaukee, WI 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference S3B-14