Solar charger

[Omakuju]

Micro controller controlled Solar charger with boost converter

Hey, so I'm looking to build a solar charger for a 36V battery array. With the solar panels we're looking at around 1000W so I'm designing everything with like a max of 40A. For this I'm using a boost converter and I'd like to control the boost converter with a PIC. I'd like to use the PIC to read the voltage and current coming from the panels, but was unsure how to do that entirely. I'm guessing I'd use a big shunt and measure the drop across it for the current? I dunno I've got the boost converter with what I think are reasonable values and am looking forward to the PIC and would like some input.

(It's for a small solar car.)

 

[Omakuju]

I know I'm new, but no help?

I've read through other similar things but don't really understand the micro controller part of the problem, on how the controller reads and how to drop my values to something it will be able to read.

 

[ericgibbs]

I know I'm new, but no help?

I've read through other similar things but don't really understand the micro controller part of the problem, on how the controller reads and how to drop my values to something it will be able to read.

hi,
Most PIC's have number of inbuilt analog to digital converters [ 10bit]

For the voltage part of your problem you would need a resistive voltage divider from the +36V, dropping it down to a max of +5V.

For the current, a series shunt resistor followed by an amplifier to bring the shunts low voltage up to a max of +5V
Assuming the PIC is powered from +5V.

The PIC program reads the A2D inputs so it can sense and control the charge rate.

This is a very basic description of whats required.