Experimental verification of the rate of charge improvement using photovoltaic MPPT hardware for the battery and ultracapacitor storage devices

The paper displays the experimental charging of the battery and the ultracapacitor (UC) energy storage devices utilizing the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) and the Non-MPPT strategies with the photovoltaic solar panels. Normally in the standalone frameworks, the batteries are the workforce yet the applications that demand peak currents, the ultracapacitors apart from these batteries can serve better. With high power density UCs, the twofold advantage of battery energy density and ultracapacitor power density is achievable. The batteries and the ultracapacitors are charged as separate energy storage devices utilizing the Non-MPPT charging first and after that by the MPPT charging strategies. A comparison is made between two charging methods for these energy storage devices. The efficiency improvement, the charging rate improvement and the payback period calculations are performed. 1.2 V Ni-MH batteries, 12 V lead-acid batteries and 12 V, 20 F UCs are tested by above said two methods. Moreover, a test bench is created to perform the simulations in Matlab/Simulink®. The simulated and experimented results demonstrate the higher level of matching and the overall improvement in the charging rate is quite significant utilizing the MPPT strategies for the batteries and the UCs.