See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/316188563

DESIGN OF A SEPIC CONVERTER FOR SOLAR PV SYSTEM

Conference Paper · March 2017

CITATIONS READS
0 886

5 authors, including:

Natarajan .K
Sri Ramakrishna Institute of Technology
13 PUBLICATIONS   7 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Portable Low Cost Solar Water Heater Cum Purifier For Rural India View project

Design of a Cost Effective Portable Solar PVT Plant for Rural and Tribal People View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Natarajan .K on 18 April 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 DESIGN OF A SEPIC CONVERTER FOR SOLAR PV SYSTEM
Mr.K.Natarajan1, M.Supriya2, Y.Abinaya3, P.Nandhakumar4, G.R.Samrajesh5
Assistant professor1, Scholars 2,3,4,5
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Sri Ramakrishna Institute of Technology
Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu- 641010, India.
E-mail: supriyathanu38@gmail.com, yjabinaya@gmail.com, nandhakumarcpn@gmail.com.

ABSTRACT: This paper presents the design of a
Single Ended Primary Inductor Converter (SEPIC)
for solar PV system. SEPIC acts like a buck-boost
DC-DC converter and it allows a range of DC voltage
adjust to maintain a constant output voltage.
Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) technique
should be used to track the maximum power point
continuously which depends on panel’s irradiance
conditions in PV solar system. The Maximum power
point has been achieved by adjusting the switching
frequency of the converter. The efficiency of the
converter is improved by the coupled inductor
because it needs only lesser amount of magnetic core.
The SEPIC converter and their various control
strategies has been discussed and simulated using
Simulink/MATLAB software.
Keywords- Solar energy, SEPIC Converter,
Maximum Power Point Tracking.
I.INTRODUCTION
characterize the maximum power from the panel
can be stored into the battery. The MPPT gain is
mainly based on the climatic condition and solar
irradiation. The current and voltage characteristics
of the solar array were described and the array was
found to deliver the maximum amount of power
only at one point on the characteristic which
corresponds to the knee of the curve called as the
maximum power point.
Among the five different types of dc-dc
converter SEPIC converter is proposed to convert
the DC current from the solar panel to load in this
work. Because buck converter can decrease the
voltage and boost converter can raise the voltage.
Both CUK and buck-boost converter cause large
amount of electrical stress on the components,
which can results in failure of devices or
overheating. In order to overcome this above
problem, SEPIC converter is used and it also gives
non-inverted output voltage and ripple free
continuous input and output current.

The whole world is facing a challenge to II. LITERATURE REVIEW

overcome the hurdle of energy crisis. Various
progress has been made over the last few years in
the research and development of renewable energy
systems such as wind, solar and fuel generation.
Nowadays, solar energy is considered as one of the
most reliable, daily available, and environment
friendly renewable energy sources. Since it is a
natural source and no need any maintenance.
Photovoltaic (PV) modules are used to
converting the solar energy into electrical energy.
The solar modules are developed by the
arrangement of solar cells in series and parallel.
However, the solar panel output is always non-
linear. MPPT technique is implemented to obtain
maximum power from the solar cell array (SCA). It
is used to control only the panel outputs, and
correlate to the battery voltage. Then it will
The proposed implementation and opinion of
various authors are to be discussed. The design based
on connecting a pulse width modulated dc/dc SEPIC
converter, which is controlled by a microprocessor
unit. By adjusting the switching frequency of the
converter maximum power point has been achieved
[1]. The dc/dc MPPT circuit using chaotic pulse width
modulation is used to track the maximum power from
solar PV module for space application. By using
CPWM as a control scheme, the conversion
efficiency of the MPPT system is increased [2].The
modified incremental conductance algorithm that
responds accurately when the solar irradiation
increases. This algorithm shows zero oscillation in the
power of PV module after the maximum power point
is tracked [3]. The SEPIC converter has been

1
compared with the conventional boost converter algorithm MPPT devices are typically integrated into
about reducing the input current ripple [4]. The an electric power converter system that provides
maximum power point tracker for solar PV panel that voltage or current conversion, filtering, and regulation
maintains the output voltage as constant irrespective for driving various loads, including power grids,
of the solar isolation level. The tracking capability has motors or batteries.
been verified experimentally with a 20 W solar panel
under a controlled setup [5]. The design with the
fuzzy logic controller that uses the convergent
distribution of the membership function. The fuzzy
controller for the SEPIC MPPT scheme shows the
voltage without any changes in different load
conditions at the inverter load side [6].

III. PROPOSED SYSTEM

This proposed work focuses on SEPIC dc-dc
converter as voltage level control using P&O MPPT
method for solar PV systems.
Fig. 2 Single diode model of PV cell
The solar power which can be collected from solar
cell cannot be utilized directly. It is usually stored in Where I is the current source, RSH is the shunt
the battery and inverter circuit and further it can be resistance and RS is the series resistance. RSH is very
used as AC supply. Moreover, the output voltage as large compared with Rs and has a negligible effect in
well as power from the solar cell depends upon the the output current. The output current from the
illumination and intensity of the light. If the light
photovoltaic array is
intensity is very low it may produce very low output
voltage. The smaller output voltage from the solar cell
may not charge the battery and the power is wasted.
I = Isc – Id (1)
Here an intermediate stage of converter called SEPIC
is used to boost the lower output voltage from the
solar cell and it also buck the voltage if the light Id = Io (eqVd/kT - 1) (2)
intensity is huge.
BLOCK DIAGRAM Where Io is the reverse saturation diode current, q is
the charge of electron, Vd is the voltage across the
diode, k is the Boltzmann constant (1.38 * 10-19 J/K)
SOLAR SEPIC
BATTERY and T is the junction temperature in Kelvin (K).

I = Isc – Io (eqVd/ kT - 1) (3)

MPPT LOAD
Using suitable approximations,
Fig.1. Block diagram of proposed system

In this system, a prototype SEPIC converter is
designed to charge the battery from the solar panel. In
this solar cells, a number of PV modules are arranged
in series and parallel to meet the desired energy
requirements. Solar cells have a difficult relationship
between solar irradiation, temperature and total
resistance that produces a non-linear output efficiency
which can be discussed based on the I-V curve. P&O
I = Isc – Io (eq (V + IRs/ nkT) - 1) (4)
Where, I is the current of photovoltaic cell, V is the
voltage of PV cell, T is the temperature (in Kelvin)
and n is the diode ideality factor. In order to model
the solar panel accurately two diode model is used.

2

Fig.3.1VI characteristics of solar PV panel
The VI characteristics of solar PV panel are
shown in fig3. The PV characteristics are obtained by
the voltage and power characteristics as shown in
fig4.
Fig.3.2.PV characteristics of solar PV panel
IV. SEPIC CONVERTER
SEPIC converter operate by rapidly turning on
and off a MOSFET, generally with a high frequency
pulse. It consists of a MOSFET switch with duty
cycle D, a diode, two inductors L1 and L2, two
capacitors C1 and C2 and a load resistor. The
optimum SEPIC converter have low component
stresses, low energy storage requirements and it
provides non inverted output not like the
conventional boost or the buck converter, the SEPIC
also has minimal active components to reduce the
switching losses.
3
Fig.4SEPIC operation
MODE 1 OPERATION:
In this operation, when the MOSFET is ON the
input inductor is supplied by the input voltage Vin and
inductor 2 is charged by the capacitor 1. The diode is
OFF and the output is maintained by the capacitor 2.
MODE 2 OPERATION:
When the MOSFET is off, the inductor output
through the diode to the load and the capacitors are
charged. In this mode output voltage will be more
because the inductors charge are longer.
V.MPPT UNIT
MPPT algorithms are changing due to simplicity,
efficiency, tracking speed, sensor required and cost. It
is viewed that the V-I characteristics of the solar
module is nonlinear and extremely affected by the
temperature and solar irradiation. The output power
of solar module is maximized, it has to be operated at
fixed value of load resistance. It needs a separate
power converter circuit for the MPPT. In this design,
a SEPIC type DC-DC converter is used to extract the
maximum power from solar module.
Perturb and Observe (P&O) is one of the popular
algorithm due to its simplicity used for tracking
maximum power point. In this algorithm, voltage and
current sensing are based to track MPP. In this
controller require calculation for power and voltage to
track MPP. In this voltage is perturbed in one
direction and if power is continuous to increase then
algorithm keep on perturb in same direction. It is an
iterative approach that perturbs the operation point of
the PV system, in order to find the direction of change
for maximizing the power. It is achieved by forcing
the derivative of the power equal to zero under
feedback control. This has the merit of not requiring
the solar panel characteristics.
Simulations have been performed to confirm
the analysis. Below fig.6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 shows the
simulation result of SEPIC converter and SEPIC
converter with MPPT method.

Fig.6.1 Output voltage wave form of SEPIC converter.

Fig.5.Flowchart of P&O algorithm

The flowchart of this method is shown in fig.6. It

is based on the comparison of change in power and
voltage. PV output voltage and PV output current are
sensed in this algorithm. Then the power is calculated
and compared with the power value calculated in
previous sample in order to get ∆P. If ∆P>0, then
the operation continues in the same direction of
perturbation, if not it reverses the perturbation
direction. It follows the same way in next cycle. Fig.6.2 Simulink diagram of SEPIC converter using MPPT
method.

VI. SIMULATION RESULTS

Fig.6.Simulink diagram of SEPIC converter Fig.6.3 output voltage of SEPIC converter with solar PV
panel.

4
 VII.CONCLUSION power point tracker for PV panels
using SEPIC converter, Tele
This paper has successfully developed communications Energy
Conference,2007, sept.30-oct
the design of SEPIC converter for solar
PV system. The modelling and simulation
of P&O MPPT algorithm was
implemented using MATLAB/Simulink
software. The simulation result proves that
the P&O MPPT with SEPIC shows the
simple structure.

REFERENCES
[1] S. Ganesh, J.Janani and G.Besliya
Angel,” A Maximum Power Point
Tracker for PV Panels Using SEPIC
Converter” IJEREC Vol:8 No:2,2014
[2] Maglin J.R, Ramesh.R and
Vaigundamoorthy.M, ” Design and
Analysis of SEPIC Converter for
Solar PV Module with CPWM” Vol:9
No:742,2014
[3] Sangeetha .S and Jitha Joseph,”
Design and Implementation of SEPIC
Converter Based PV system using
Modified Incremental conductance
Algorithm” IEEE vol:5 No:1,2016
[4] M.R.Banaei, M.R.Shirinabady and
Mehdi Mirzaey, “MPPT control of
Photovoltaic using SEPIC converter
to reduce the input current ripples”
ISSN Vol:4 No:1,2014
[5] Suneel C Hippargi and Prasanna D
Kulkarni,” Maximum Power Point
tracker for Solar PV panels using
SEPIC Converter” IJSR
Vol:4No:5,2015
[6] G.Thambi, S.Prem Kumar, Y.Murali
Krishna, M.Aruna” Fuzzy-Logic-
Controller-Based SEPIC Converter
for MPPT in Standalone PV systems”
IRJET Vol:2No:2,2015
[7] K.S.Tey and S. Mekhilef,” Modified
Incremental Conductance MPPT
algorithm to Mitigate Inaccurate
Responses under Fast Changing
Solar Irradiation Level”
Vol:101no:5, 2014.
[8] A.EI khateb, N.Abd Rahim,
J.Selvaraj and M.N.Uddin,”Fuzzy-
logic-controller-based SEPIC
converter for maximum power point
tracking”, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appli. ,
Vol.50, no.4, pp. 2349- 2359.
[9] R.B.Darla, Development of maximum

View publication stats