SOLAR BASED MOBILE CHARGER FOR RURAL AREAS

(Recharge Your Mobile Devices on the Go Using the Energy of the Sun)

With the existing push in the direction of sustainable, clean sources of power, it is no surprise that solar power has become one of the most popular alternative energy sources. Free and available everywhere, the power of the sun can be employed to power everything like cel phones and MP3 player. The sun's energy is usually harvested through solar panels that are made up of photovoltaic cells. These cells can convert the sun's power into electricity that can be used for a number of purposes. For private use, a handheld solar hybrid charger can be employed to recharge little device for instance a MP3 player, a cell phone, or a camera.

A normal PN junction diode is used for unidirectional flow of charge current. The output of the solar panel depends on the intensity of the solar light. To regulate this voltage, LM317 is used. LM317 is an adjustable voltage regulator. The regulator circuit is designed to get a fixed voltage of 5V.

An alternative charger circuit is also provided to charge the mobile by house hold general purpose 230V in the absence of the sun light. This charge circuit uses regulated 5V, 750mA power supply. 7805 three terminal voltage regulator is used for voltage regulation. Bridge type full wave rectifier is used to rectify the ac output of secondary of 230/18V step down transformer.

Solar Panel

Unidirectional flow Control Device

Regulator

Battery under charge

Step down T/F

Bridge Rectifier

Filter Circuit

Regulato r

Power supply to rechargeable battery

POWER SUPPLY: The input to the circuit is applied from the regulated power supply. The a.c. input i.e., 230V from the mains supply is step down by the transformer to 12V and is fed to a rectifier. The output obtained from the rectifier is a pulsating d.c voltage. So in order to get a pure d.c voltage, the output voltage from the rectifier is fed to a filter to remove any a.c components present even after rectification. Now, this voltage is given to a voltage regulator to obtain a pure constant dc voltage.

D.C
230V AC 50Hz

Output

Step down transformer

Bridge Rectifier

Filter

Regulator

Fig: Power supply

Transformer: Usually, DC voltages are required to operate various electronic equipment and these voltages are 5V, 9V or 12V. But these voltages cannot be obtained directly. Thus the a.c input available at the mains supply i.e., 230V is to be brought down to the required voltage level. This is done by a transformer. Thus, a step down transformer is employed to decrease the voltage to a required level.

Rectifier: The output from the transformer is fed to the rectifier. It converts A.C. into pulsating D.C. The rectifier may be a half wave or a full wave rectifier. In this project, a bridge rectifier is used because of its merits like good stability and full wave rectification.

The Bridge rectifier is a circuit, which converts an ac voltage to dc voltage using both half cycles of the input ac voltage. The Bridge rectifier circuit is shown in the figure. The circuit has four diodes connected to form a bridge. The ac input voltage is applied to the diagonally opposite ends of the bridge. The load resistance is connected between the other two ends of the bridge. For the positive half cycle of the input ac voltage, diodes D1 and D3 conduct, whereas diodes D2 and D4 remain in the OFF state. The conducting diodes will be in series with the load resistance RL and hence the load current flows through RL.For the negative half cycle of the input ac voltage, diodes D2 and D4 conduct whereas, D1 and D3 remain OFF. The conducting diodes D2 and D4 will be in series with the load resistance RL and hence the current flows through RL in the same direction as in the previous half cycle. Thus a bi-directional wave is converted into a

unidirectional

wave.

Filter:

Capacitive filter is used in this project. It removes the ripples from the output of rectifier and smoothens the D.C. Output received from this filter is constant until the mains voltage and load is maintained constant. However, if either of the two is varied, D.C. voltage received at this point changes. Therefore a regulator is applied at the output stage.

Voltage regulator: As the name itself implies, it regulates the input applied to it. A voltage regulator is an electrical regulator designed to automatically maintain a constant voltage level. In this project, power supply of 5V and 12V are required. In order to obtain these voltage levels, 7805 and 7812 voltage regulators are to be used. The first number 78 represents positive supply and the numbers 05, 12 represent the required output voltage levels. The L78xx series of three-terminal positive regulators is available in TO-220, TO-220FP, TO-3, D2PAK and DPAK packages and several fixed output voltages, making it useful in a wide range of applications. These regulators can provide local on-card regulation, eliminating the distribution problems associated with single point regulation. Each type employs internal current limiting, thermal shut-down and safe area protection, making it essentially indestructible. If adequate heat sinking is provided, they can deliver over 1 A output current. Although designed primarily as fixed voltage regulators, these devices can be used with external components to obtain adjustable voltage and currents.

Solar Panel

A solar

panel (photovoltaic

module or photovoltaic

panel)

is

packaged

interconnected assembly of solar cells, also known asphotovoltaic cells. The solar panel is used as a component in a larger photovoltaic system to offer electricity for commercial and residential applications. Because a single solar panel can only produce a limited amount of power, many installations contain several panels. This is known as aphotovoltaic array. A photovoltaic installation typically includes an array of solar panels, an inverter, batteries and interconnection wiring. Photovoltaic systems are used for either on- or off-grid applications, and for solar panels on spacecraft.

Theory and construction

PV cells in a panel. Solar panels use light energy (photons) from the sun to generate electricity through the photovoltaic effect (this is the photo-electric effect). The structural (load carrying) member of a module can either be the top layer (superstrate) or the back layer (substrate). The majority of modules use wafer-based crystalline silicon cells or a thin-film cell based on cadmium

telluride or silicon. Crystalline silicon, which is commonly used in the wafer form in photovoltaic (PV) modules, is derived from silicon, a commonly used semi-conductor. In order to use the cells in practical applications, they must be: connected electrically to one another and to the rest of the system

protected from mechanical damage during manufacture, transport, installation and use (in

particular against hail impact, wind and snow loads). This is especially important for waferbased silicon cells which are brittle.

protected from moisture, which corrodes metal contacts and interconnects, (and for thin-

film cells the transparent conductive oxide layer) thus decreasing performance and lifetime. Most modules are usually rigid, but there are some flexible modules available, based on thin-film cells. Electrical connections are made in series to achieve a desired output voltage and/or in parallel to provide a desired amount of current source capability. Diodes are included to avoid overheating of cells in case of partial shading. Since cell heating reduces the operating efficiency it is desirable to minimize the heating. Very few modules incorporate any design features to decrease temperature, however installers try to provide good ventilation behind the module. New designs of module include concentrator modules in which the light is concentrated by an array of lenses or mirrors onto an array of small cells. This allows the use of cells with a very high-cost per unit area (such as gallium arsenide) in a cost-competitive way. Depending on construction, the photovoltaic can cover a range of frequencies of light and can produce electricity from them, but sometimes cannot cover the entire solar spectrum (specifically, ultraviolet, infrared and low or diffused light). Hence much of

incident sunlight energy is wasted when used for solar panels, although they can give far higher efficiencies if illuminated with monochromatic light. Another design concept is to split the light into different wavelength ranges and direct the beams onto different cells tuned to the

appropriate wavelength ranges. This is projected to raise efficiency by 50%. Also, the use of infrared photovoltaic cells can increase the efficiencies, producing power at night. Sunlight conversion rates (module efficiencies) can vary from 5-18% in commercial production (solar panels), that can be lower than cell conversion. The current market leader in efficient solar energy modules is SunPower, whose solar panels have a conversion ratio of 19.3%, with Sanyo having the most efficient modules at 20.4%. However, a whole range of other companies (HoloSun, Gamma Solar, NanoHorizons) are emerging which are also offering new innovations in photovoltaic modules, with a conversion ratio of around 18%. These new innovations include power generation on the front and back sides and increased outputs; however, most of these companies have not yet produced working systems from their design plans, and are mostly still actively improving the technology. Crystalline silicon modules Solar Cell Most solar module are currently produced from silicon PV cells. These are typically categorized into either monocrystalline or multicrystalline modules. Thin-film modules Third generation solar cells are advanced thin-film cells. They produce high-efficiency conversion at low cost.

Rigid thin-film modules In rigid thin film modules, the cell and the module are manufactured in the same production line. The cell is created on a glass substrate or superstrate, and the electrical connections are created in situ, a so called "monolithic integration". The substrate or superstrate is laminatedwith an encapsulant to a front or back sheet, usually another sheet of glass. The main cell technologies in this category are CdTe, or a-Si, or a-Si+uc-Si tandem, or CIGS (or variant). Amorphous silicon has a sunlight conversion rate of 6-12%. Flexible thin-film modules Flexible thin film cells and modules are created on the same production line by depositing the photoactive layer and other necessary layers on a flexible substrate. If the substrate is an insulator (e.g. polyester or polyimide film) then monolithic integration can be used. If it is a conductor then another technique for electrical connection must be used. The cells are assembled into modules by laminating them to a transparent

colourless fluoropolymer on the front side (typically ETFE or FEP) and a polymer suitable for bonding to the final substrate on the other side. The only commercially available (in MW quantities) flexible module uses amorphous silicon triple junction (from Unisolar).

So-called inverted

metamorphic (IMM) multijunction

solar

cells made

on compound-

semiconductor technology are just becoming commercialized in July 2008. The University of Michigan's solar car that won the North American Solar challenge in July 2008 used IMM thinfilm flexible solar cells. The requirements for residential and commercial are different in that the residential needs are simple and can be packaged so that as technology at the solar cell progress, the other base line equipment such as the battery, inverter and voltage sensing transfer switch still need to be compacted and unitized for residential use. Commercial use, depending on the size of the service will be limited in the photovoltaic cell arena, and more complex parabolic reflectors and solar concentrators are becoming the dominant technology. The global flexible and thin-film photovoltaic (PV) market, despite caution in the overall PV industry, is expected to experience a CAGR of over 35% to 2019, surpassing 32GW according to a major new study by IntertechPira. Module embedded electronics Several companies have begun embedding electronics into PV modules. This enables performing Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) for each module individually, and the measurement of performance data for monitoring and fault detection at module level. Some of these solutions make use of Power Optimizers, a DC to DC converter technology developed to maximize the power harvest from solar photovoltaic systems.

Module performance and lifetime Module performance is generally rated under Standard Test Conditions (STC) : irradiance of 1,000 W/m, solar spectrum of AM 1.5 and module temperature at 25C. Electrical characteristics include nominal power (PMAX, measured in W), open circuit voltage (VOC), short circuit current (ISC, measured in amperes), maximum power

voltage (VMPP),maximum power current (IMPP) and module efficiency (%). In kWp, kW is kilowatt and the p means peak as peak performance. The p however does not show the peak performance, but rather the maximum output according to STC . Solar panels must withstand heat, cold, rain and hail for many years. Many Crystalline silicon module manufacturers offer warranties that guarantee electrical production for 10 years at 90% of rated power output and 25 years at 80% Production 7.5 GW of installations were completed and connected in 2009. IMS Research estimates that shipments of PV modules were far higher. Shipments exceeded installations due to the record amount of modules shipped in the final quarter of the year to serve installations completed in the first quarter of 2010 in booming European markets such as Germany, Italy, France and Czech Republic

Procedure
1. keep the solar panel in sunlight 2. As solar panel gets heated up it charges the mobile connected to the output pin. 3. During night mobile can also be charged by using power supply circuit.

Advantages:
Highly sensitive Visual identification with LED Low cost and reliable circuit Sensitivity can be adjusted

CONCLUSION

This project presents a SOLAR BASED MOBILE CHARGER FOR RURAL AREAS

Experimental work has been carried out carefully. The result shows that higher efficiency is indeed achieved using the dual supply. The proposed method is verified to be highly beneficial for the purpose for rural areas.

REFERENCE

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