Solar Energy

Solar energy systems for electricity production are often connected to a battery for energy storage. Such a system generally consists of the following components:

• For electricity production – from photovoltaic or solar panels, which are themselves made up of photovoltaic or solar cells;
• Charge controller – these are systems that control the parameters of the electrical energy received from the photovoltaic panels for the purpose of recharging the batteries;
• The battery – represents a set of elements or monoblocks connected in series and/or parallel to achieve the necessary capacity and voltage for the battery;
• Monitoring – these are electronic devices used primarily to monitor the state of battery charge and provide users with this information locally and/or remotely.

I will present in general and particular certain properties and characteristics of each element described above that make up such a solar system for charging a battery. Additionally, in the analysis, I used software modeling with the help of simulation programs such as SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis), originally authored by Laurence Nagel at the electronic research laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Proteus program from Labcenter Electronics Ltd.

Such a system for monitoring voltages can also be used in wind systems that complement a photovoltaic system for electricity production.

Monitoring the battery is important because it indicates the state of charge of the battery and simultaneously shows the charge level of the individual cells that make up the battery. In this case, we considered that the battery consists of 4 series-connected cells of 12[V] each, resulting in a battery with a nominal voltage of 48[V].