Solar-fed Portable Charging Module for Camping/ Solcellsdriven Portabel Laddningsmodul för Friluftsaktiviteter

Abstract

With an increasing interest in outdoor recreational activities such as hiking and camping and an increasing reliance on portable gadgets, the demand for portable power solutions is expanding. This project aims to design and prototype a solar fed portable charging module to address such a demand. The aim of the project is to efficiently extract solar energy and support charging of a power bank. The system architecture consist of an input from a solar panel, the designed DC-DC converter and a power bank as energy storage source. To efficiently extract solar energy, a Perturb & Observe based Maximum Power Point Tracking algorithm, along with the suitable charging control logic is implemented. The DC-DC converter and the control algorithm is verified using MATLAB Simulink. Following the simulation, a hardware prototype PCB is designed using KiCad with the control logic implemented on the Arduino platform. While the basic functionality of hardware is tested, further testing of the DC-DC converter with the implemented control logic needs to be performed in the future