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Micah Black

Micah Black

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We need to do something with the power that the MPPTs create or else they’ll just charge up the output capacitor and then do nothing. In the car, we use it to power the high voltage bus. Current from the panels goes to motors or to batteries, depending on the current demand. The important thing to note is that the batteries will make the HV bus look like a constant voltage.

Option

Pros

Cons

1 - Battery

  • Most realistic to the actual system

  • Actually doing something with the power (not burning it as heat)

  • Need to be careful with the batteries - Li-ions can be dangerous

  • Hard to test different voltages - need to wait for the battery to charge or discharge

2 - E-Load in CV mode

  • Very easy to simulate different voltage conditions (fully charged battery vs almost empty battery)

  • The control loop inside the E-load may cause weird things to happen with the MPPT algorithm. Generally its pretty good if a large capacitor is on the output of the MPPT though.

3 - Resistive load

  • Very simple operation

  • Not configurable

  • Current and voltage are not independent. Might need to choose a different resistor depending on input conditions.