Evaluation of Power Maximization and Curtailment Control Methods for Converters in Wearable Photovoltaic Energy Harvesting Applications

oleh: F. Selin Bagci, Katherine A. Kim, Yu-Chen Liu, Yi-Hua Liu

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: IEEE 2022-01-01

Deskripsi

As wearables become more widely adopted, powering them from ambient energy sources can improve reliability and reduce reliance on batteries. Solar photovoltaic (PV) power is a viable power source for such emerging applications. However, because wearable applications bend and move with the user&#x0027;s motion, the PV panels used in these applications experience varying light intensities over multiple PV cells that reduce power generation in traditional series-string configurations. To address the PV power reduction problem, a configuration of boost converters with parallel-connected outputs are utilized, which is effective in uneven lighting conditions. Depending on the load demand and available solar power, a converter control system should quickly transition between maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and power curtailment operation. This work evaluates MPPT (perturb &amp; observe and constant-voltage) algorithms and power curtailment (over-voltage shut-off and flexible power point tracking) methods on their effectiveness in wearable applications. Experimental results verify that the perturb &amp; observe with flexible power point tracking effectively adapts to changes in the load and light conditions while maintaining 30&#x0025; and 31&#x0025; higher output power, respectively. It also maintains the maximum component temperature below 29 <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{\circ }$</tex-math></inline-formula>C which is a safe temperature for wearable applications.