Close

Postmortem Updates

A project log for 100W MPPT Prototype Charger

Prototype of a MPPT charger for 12V PV systems.

brian-cornellBrian Cornell 02/15/2020 at 21:180 Comments

For anyone that really wants to build this thing I've posted updated code containing two improvements.  Firstly, I fixed an annoying firmware failure mode that would require rebooting the charger when clearing snow off the PV panel.  It wasn't a bug - just bad code.  During the charger start sequence I had a check for the charger's output voltage less than the battery - a simple way to tell if there was a HW problem.  But I did this without checking the PV voltage first.  Fixed by moving the check into the runtime loop where a true low PV volts condition would trap first.

Second, I wasn't satisfied with heuristic P&O algorithm.  It spent too much time bobbing about the MPP mean and wasting energy.  I worked on improvements but it got more complicated than I wanted.  Instead I came up with the 'sweep' algorithm which made it much simpler to find & lock on the MPP.  Not perfect but much better than the heuristic version.

All updates are documented in-line and you can select which MPPT algorithm to use with a compile constant.

Discussions