Solar car efficient power converters' design

Abstract

The first solar car racing named as the World Solar Challenge was organised in Australia aiming to trigger the development of solar powered vehicles by researchers all over the world, and so do, various technologies have emerged targeting to make solar powered vehicles perform similar to fuel powered vehicles. Nevertheless, such vehicles still have limitations in terms of energy management technology, including photovoltaic and energy storage system. A solar car energy management system must ensure that the flow of electrical power from the PV and from/to the energy storage devices to the motor are optimised and monitored. Energy efficiency and light weight are important factors for a successful vehicle. In order to achieve that in this work, a 5 kWh Lithium ion battery, 2 kW in-wheel axial flux permanent magnet brushless DC motor with a rated voltage of 48 V, 1035 W monocrystalline PV modules, and silicon carbide devices in power converters are selected to attain such constraints. In addition, ultra capacitor is used as a second energy storage device to take the advantages of the fast charging and discharging. Buck-Boost converters are designed to regulate the output voltage of the three sources which are PV panel, battery, and ultra capacitor. The proposed design was validated with simulations and experiments.