Solar Technologies
Why Use Solar Tech With EV Technologies?
India has seen successful solar deployment and the abundance of solar energy due to its geographic location. The one-time installation and capital expense, works well for at least 20-25 years, with the return on investment, taken care of in a few years. The energy input henceforth, becomes virtually free. The subsequent sections will illustrate a feasible implementation that may be adopted to harness solar energy, store it and use it for EV charging. It will touch upon energy harnessing & storage schemes, distributed battery management, power conversion and connectivity, which are the basic building blocks for a modular, scalable, solar powered EV charging station. A typical solar EV charging station implementation is depicted through the diagram below. The major building blocks are shown below.
Features ➤
Solar Electric Charges for 2W, 3W
Electric Charging for all types of vehicles (2W, 3W, 4W, 9 Meter, 12 Meter)
Easy Installation & Low maintenance
Solar To EV Block Diagram
Learn How We Can Use Solar Power In EV Tech
There is the user side, which basically depicts the functionalities visible to the end user. Information exchange and the user interaction is taken care of, here. It would typically consist of a TFT screen with touch sensing, NFC card readers for authentication or payments, and maybe also a Bluetooth interface for more advanced features.
The vehicle is physically connected to any of the output ports: AC slow charge for smaller vehicles and e rickshaws, AC fast charging for some classes of vehicles and of course, DC fast charging. The user has to authenticate himself, set his charge preferences and he needs to wait till the charge session is over. However, the more complex functions go on behind the scene, which are controlled and monitored by the central controller in conjunction with many different other modules.
Power flow and energy management: The system has 3 sources of power. First and foremost, are the solar panels. The sizing estimation is beyond the scope of this article, but, it is typically a few kilowatts at the minimum. A panel would typically produce at rated irradiance, about 150W/square meter. The solar panels feed the MPPT module. This is a DC-DC converter with a maximum power point tracking algorithm running inside it. These are typically very high efficiency units, running at excesses of 98% electrical efficiency. These are typically multiphase interleaved buck or buckboost converters, and operating levels are at a few hundred volts at both the input and output side. Isolation may or may not be a requirement, but most implementations are galvanically isolated for regulatory and safety reasons. The output feeds a common DC bus, from which downstream energy may be provided to the load. The implementation may be analog, fully digital or a mix of analog and digital control.
The second source is the grid. This may be optional, as the intent is to maximize the usage of solar. However, in areas where intermittent grid is available, or where the solar insolation is not entirely sufficient for operation year-long, or during certain seasons, grid helps in fulfilling the demand. Since the system is essentially a solar energy storage setup, it is also possible to use this station to supplement the grid, during peak hours or as a solar farm, using bidirectional grid tied inverters. With proper policies in place for exporting to the grid from solar farms or from captive plants with nett metering, this serves a dual purpose too.
The third source and the sink/storage, is the battery. The trend these days is to use Li Ion batteries which have very high cycle life, lends itself well to quick charging, very high depth of discharge and very high volumetric efficiency. It is possible to house these batteries underground, to save real estate. These Li Ion battery packs are arranged in a suitable series parallel combination, and in several strings. The batteries terminate themselves into a junction box and termination unit, which also functions as a supervisor. Each battery has a data port, typically CAN or RS485, and these are daisy chained and fed to this termination unit, which then has a top level view of the health and status of every individual battery, string or the entire battery bank. This is essentially a data concentrator and a switching unit, putting battery packs IN or OUT of circuit. In addition, this communicates with the central controller to decide the charge and discharge of the batteries.
The following diagram makes the power system architecture quite clear. This is a modular system, to allow for suitable expansion, and modules are typically expandable and 3-5kW each with a communication bus, typically CAN or MODBUS/RS485. The central controller is able to configure the modules as per the functional requirement at any point of time: be it charge management, be it load management or be it diagnostic checks. There is a provision within the controller to also monitor the energy usage, basically kWh consumed, kWh stored and kWh generated/exported. It can also communicate with industry standard energy meters for billing and tariff setting purposes.
Growth Of Solar Technologies
1992 - 2018
Worldwide growth of photovoltaics has been close to exponential between 1992 and 2018. During this period of time, photovoltaics (PV), also known as solar PV, evolved from a niche market of small-scale applications to a mainstream electricity source.
One Sun, One world, One grid: India's solar vision by Narendra Modi (PMO INDIA)
Collaboration With Sunergize Energy Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
We have collabed with Sunergize Energy Solutions Pvt. Ltd. to provide best in class solar tech solutions
Sunergize has established this unique portfolio of the company in Solar Industry, which gives a great advantage on many fronts in the Industry
Plant Locations :
Ashtavinayak Solar Technology Pvt. Ltd., 30 MW (Complete Plant Setup)
Deepam Solar, 30MW, (Complete Plant Setup)
Aavishkar Solar Technology LLP., 160 MW (Complete Plant Setup - in progress)
Helios Volt Age Pvt. Ltd. 80 MW (Complete Plant Setup - in progress)