International Journal of Electronics and Computer Science Engineering

Available Online at www.ijecse.org

228

ISSN- 2277-1956

Design and Construction of Variable DC

Source for Laboratory Using Solar Energy
Hnin Mar Wai 1, Zaw Min Min Htun
1

Department of Electronic Engineering, Mandalay Technological University #

Mandalay, Myanmar

Abstract- The purpose of this paper is to design and construct variable DC power supply for laboratory using switch
mode DC to DC converter. The regulated power of a variable output voltage ranging is from 0 to 36 V with a maximum
output current of 3A is presented in this paper. This variable DC power supply is based on the step-down and step-up
output voltage process which use both buck and boost converter topologies. A switching converter comprise of capacitors,
an inductor, a diode and a switch. DC power supply is an essential device for most of electrical circuits and engineering
students. The benefits of this design are; reduce size, less expensive and energy save. In this design, a microcontroller is
used to control output voltage for precise and stability. The output voltage and duty cycle is displayed with LCD display.
Keywords Switching mode power supply, Buck converter, boost converter, Converters design, microcontroller, LCD
display

I. INTRODUCTION
Energy from the sun is the best option for electricity generation as it is available everywhere. Solar energy is
renewable and also cleaner than any other energy produced from fossil fuels. Solar energy is virtually available
everywhere in the world and it is abundant and no other source in renewable energy. Solar energy from PV panel
converts into electrical energy. Some of the energy pollutes the environment to generate the electricity. Thus, this
system intends to produce electricity by using solar energy and to supply power for a laboratory. In this design, 80
W solar panel is used which has 17.6V and 4.55 A. Using charge controller, voltage is charged into 12V battery. In
this system, only DC to DC converter portion is mainly designed. Therefore, 12V battery is used as a source for DC
to DC converter. Power supply is an element that supplies electrical power to a device or group of devices. Usually,
DC power supply is employed in the laboratory for experimental purpose and for testing low power devices. It is a
variable power supply which can supply and connect various loads. Most of the power supplies are constructed
using transformers and for high ratings power supply would be bulky. Furthermore, output voltage regulation is
limited to small range. In this design, switching mode power topologies are mainly employed. The switching power
supply is not only improving in the world of engineering but also rapidly growing markets in the power conversion
world. Switching mode power supply (SMPS) can convert a DC input voltage into a different output voltage
depending on the circuit topologies. The switching power supply overcomes advantages on linear power supply due
to smaller in size, light weight, provide a high quality output, lower power dissipation, reduced costs and more
efficient. Therefore, they are extensively used in low power consume devices such as in personal computer,
computer peripherals, communication, medical electronics and adapters of consumer electronic devices to give
various level of dc output voltages.
II. CIRCUIT OPERATION OF BUCK CONVERTER
A buck converter is called a step-down DC to DC converter because the output is less than the input. There are
only four main components to the buck converter circuit, a high speed switching device, a freewheeling diode, an
inductor (L) and an output filter capacitor(C). The output voltage is maintained and monitored at a desired level by a
control circuit which is a switch ON and OFF at a set frequency but with a varying duty cycle. The duty cycle is
defined as the ratio between ON time to the period of the switching frequency. When the switch is turned ON,
current begin flowing from the supply through L, into C and the load. The inductor build up energy in its magnetic
field, with the voltage drop developed across L bucking some of the input voltage. When the switch is turned OFF,
by its nature the inductor opposes any drop in current by suddenly reversing its voltage and supplies current to the

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Design and Construction of Variable DC Source for Laboratory Using Solar Energy

load via the diode. The DC output voltage which appears across the load is a fraction of the input voltage and is
proportional to the duty cycle. The output voltage can be defined as
VO=Vs D

Figure 1: Buck Converter Circuit

III. CIRCUIT OPERATION OF BOOST CONVERTER

Boost converter is essentially a step up power converter that takes in a low voltage input and provide at a much
higher voltage. The ideal boost converter has five basic components, namely a power semiconductor switch, a diode,
an inductor, a capacitor and a PWM controller. The placement of the inductor, the switch and the diode in the boost
converter is different from that of the buck converter. It is more complex than the buck. In this case, the MOSFET is
in the lower position while the diode is in the upper position. The inductor is on the input side and output has a
purely capacitive filter. When the switch is turned ON, diode D is reverse biased and input voltage is applied across
inductor. Current builds up in the inductor to a peak value.
When the switch is turned OFF, the voltage across L reverse causing the voltage at the diode to rise above the
input voltage. The diode then conducts the energy stored in the inductor, plus energy direct from the supply to the
smoothing capacitor and load. Therefore output voltage is always greater than the input voltage, making this a set-up
converter. For continuous mode operation, the boost converter equation is obtained by a similar process for the buck
and is given below:
Vo
V
i

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.
=

1
1 D

IJECSE, Volume 3, Number 3

Hnin Mar Wai and Zaw Min Min Htun

Figure 2: Boost Converter

IV. PROPOSED SYSTEM

DC to DC Converter
Solarpanel

Battery

Charge
controller

Buck and Boost

converter

load

Variable PWM

LCD display

PIC 16F877A

Voltage sensing

Figure 3: Overall block diagram of Variable DC power supply

V. PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS
Table 1: Boost Converter specifications
Table 2: Buck Converter specifications
specifications
value
unit
specifications
value
Input voltage(Vin)
12
V
Input voltage(Vin)
12
output voltage(Vout)
11
V
output voltage(Vout)
36
Maximum output current
3
A
Maximum output current
3
frequency
30
KHz
frequency
30
VI. HARDWARE DESIGN CONSIDERATION

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unit
V
V
A
KHz

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(A) Inductor Selection

Inductor losses are the hardest to eliminate, because it has an exact number of turns on the coil to maintain the
necessary inductance for the converter to function. The larger the inductor value, the higher the maximum output
current because of ripple current. However, if the inductor value is low, the size of inductor will be small. The
inductor current rating always must be greater than the switching current. In this design, ferrite core is chosen for
use in both buck and boost converter. Ferrite core is mostly used for high frequencies application. Switching
frequency is selected at 30 kHz. Before calculating of inductor value, it is needed to know about the inductor ripple
current. Therefore,
IL  0.3  Ioutmax  0.3  3  0.9A
For buck converter inductance value, the input and output parameters are as allow;
VIN=12V, IL=3A, Fsw=30 kHz
Therefore,

L=




=33.9H

For boost converter, the maximum desired output voltage is 36V. The inductor ripple current is


IL  0.3    Ioutmax  2.7A

Now, we can calculate the inductor value by substituting by the following equation;

L 


"

For Buck Converter

98.76H

Where
VIN
VOUT
fSW
IL

= typical input voltage

= desired output voltage
= switching frequency of the converter
= inductor ripple current

For Boost Converter

(B) Rectifier Diode Selection

Diode choice is a tradeoff between breakdown voltage, speed, and forward voltage. The higher the forward
voltage, the more power that will be dissipated and lost. However, fast diode is needed to act as a switch for the
energy in the inductor. If the diode is slow to react, the efficiency of the converter will lower and damaging high
voltage transients will develop. To reduce power losses, diodes are selected these abilities: fast switching
characteristics, low forward voltage drop, low reverse recovery, sufficient peak and average current handling
capability and low thermal resistance. However, fast diode is required to act as a switch for the energy in the
inductor. If the diode is slow to react, the efficiency of the converter will lower and damaging high voltage transients
will develop. Schottky diode is the most suitable for switched mode power supply and high frequencies DC to DC
converter because their current and voltage rating are low. The best combination of these characteristic that could be
found was STPCW30LW45CW which has 45 V reverse breakdown, and 0.57 V of forward drop at the expected
currents of 30A. Furthermore, switching losses are ignored by using schottky diode. Firstly, the diode current is
estimated by this equation.
IF=Iout (max)(1D)
The power dissipation can be calculated by this equation
PD=VFID
Where
IF
= average forward current of rectifier diode
Iout
= maximum output current necessary in the application
(C) Capacitor Selection

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Hnin Mar Wai and Zaw Min Min Htun

The right value of capacitance is required to obtain a desired output voltage. As before, the output current is 3A,
D =0.9 for buck and boost converter is D=0.67, Ts = 33s. Assume that the output voltage ripple is 1% of its dc
value (i.e. VO = 0.12V.).Therefore, the formula equation for buck converter is following:
C

IL
= 100F
8 Fsw Vout

For boost converter, the output capacitor is expressed by

C=

Iout D
= 1000F
Fsw Vout

Where
Cout
=output capacitance
Iout(max) =maximum output current of this application
D
=duty cycle
=switching frequency
Fsw
(D) MOSFET Selection
A MOSFET can be used as a switch. It is a voltage-controlled device which is fully ON and approximates a
closed switch when the gate-source voltage is sufficiently large. All of buck converter circuit, p-channel MOSFET
was used to simplify because it is no need to use the g1ate driver circuit. If the gate voltage is sufficiently high,
current will flow from drain to source in P-MOSFET. In this design, the switching MOSFET for buck converter
have the following features: drain current is 19A and drain to source breakdown voltage (VDS) is 100V, Rds of
0.2. Hence, IRF9540N (p-channel) has been selected for buck converter. Only small size of heat-sink is required
for small heat dissipation at high current flow conditions. An N-channel enhancement mode power MOSFET is
mostly used as a high speed switching device for boost converter. In n-MOSFET, the gate voltage is sufficiently
high, the current flow from drain to source. The goal of this design for boost converter is set to implement a low-cost
hardware device that can give ease and flexibility to produce DC output voltage 36V. Therefore, IRF540 power
MOSFET has the following characteristic VDS=100V and ID=33A. Not only it has a maximum leakage current is
100nA and very low resistance of 0.07but also small conduction loss.
E. Voltage Sensing Circuit

To monitor and sample the voltage from output voltage, voltage divider circuit is required . The operation
voltage of PIC16F877A is 3V to 5V. In this circuit, consist of two resistor which one is resistor and other is

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potentiometer. These resistors will divide the voltage from output to a suitable volatage which is received by the
built in ADC in the microcontroller. Voltage division defines as
R2
Vout = [
]Vs
R1 + R 2
VII. EXPLANATION OF OVERALL CIRCUIT

Figure 4: Schematic diagram of PIC16F877A with Buck and Boost Converter

Operation of Overall Circuits

There are four parts in this circuit: buck converter, boost converter, driver circuit to drive the gate of MOSFET
and voltage sensing circuit. In this design, the mainly source input voltage is from 12 V battery. Firstly, 12V input
voltage is step-down nearly minimum output voltage 1.5V to maximum output voltage is 11V. Therefore, buck
converter (step-down) was selected. Secondly, the minimum output voltage is 14 v to maximum output voltage is
approximately 36V for boost converter. The DC/DC converter is controlled by PIC16F877A microcontroller which
is clocked at 20MHz by the crystal. To monitor and sample the output voltage, voltage divider network is needed to
lower their voltage range. The PIC16F877A operates voltage range is 3V to 5V. The 5V to power the PIC16F877A
is produced by LM7805 linear regulator. For PWM output, pin17 (Capture Module PWM) is used to control the
duty cycle of the buck and boost converter. Using PIC software, the frequency of the PWM is set to 30 KHz. The
battery voltage runs through a voltage divider network to drop the input voltage into the 5V range that can be read
by PIC and output voltage is senesced by using the voltage sensing circuit. Finally, 162 line LCD is used to display
the output voltage and duty cycle.
VIII. SOFTWARE DESIGN CONSIDERATION
(A) Microcontroller
In this design, PIC 16F877A is chosen as a microcontroller. This microcontroller is the most suitable requirement
of this design because of it has ADC (analog to digital converter) module and hardware PWM module. It is operated
at speed of 20MHz crystal. At this speed each instruction set will be executed at 50ns second. This program is
written in Micro C language and is compiled by micro PRO for version 4.15. The resulting hexadecimal file was
programmed to PIC16F877A by connecting PICKIT 2 Programmer. It could read, write, erase and verify the

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Hnin Mar Wai and Zaw Min Min Htun

program from the PIC microcontroller in a thousand of times. This PIC16F877A is a complete combination of
characteristics, performance, low power consumption for this application. The flash memory has 814 bytes,
3688bytes of data memory (RAM), I/O Ports, CCP modules program for the control process of the microcontroller
was written using Micro C. Using PIC kit2.V.2.6.1, the resulting hexadecimal file was programmed on PIC16F877A
that is connected to the parallel port of a computer. This program starts by initializing the A/D module and the D/A
PWM module and sets the duty ratio at 50%. The PWM module is turned off at this time and the program runs A/D
conversion on channel RA0 to sense the output voltage. If the output voltage is greater than desired voltage, the duty
cycle will be decreased by 1 and otherwise duty cycle will also be decreased.

Figure 5: Circuit Construction of PIC 16F877A for Voltage Sensing

Start

Initialize ADC
module

Initialize PWM
module

PWM duty cycle ratio

YES

NO

Switch=1

Sense Output voltage

Sense Output voltage

For buck converter

For boost converter

YES

Output voltage
>11?

PWM duty
S=S+1

PWM duty
S=S+1

Output voltage
>36?

Delay Time

Delay Time

PWM duty
S=S-1

NO

PWM duty
S=S-1

Figure 6: Flowchart of Buck and Boost Converter

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Table 3: Pin assignment of PIC16F877A on buck and boost converter

Input/output

Pin Assignment

Connect Process

input

MCLR

input

RA0

To control duty cycle of converters

input

RA1

To sense converter output voltage

input

OSC1,OSC2

output

CCP1

output

RD2 to RD7

To connect always +5V

To connect oscillator 10MHz

To send PWM signal to the switch of converter
To display the output voltage result

D0
D1
D2
D3
D4
D5
D6
D7
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

1
Vss
2
VDD
3
VEE
4
Rs
5
Rw
6
E

(B) Displaying Device

There are many types of Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) module lying on their display function technique.
Alphanumeric LCD module is used to provide the user with clear vision for viewing. In this design, 216 LCD is
employed to display duty cycle and output voltage. They have some advantages of LCD are their low power
consumption and low cost. There are basically two types of LCDs are parallel and serial LCDs. Serial LCDs are
easier to use than the parallel ones but they usually cost and they couldnt be easily available in the local market.
Therefore, a parallel LCD is used in this design. GDM 1602A LCD has been selected. It is two characters per line
display module. It has 16 interfacing pins.

IX. SIMULATION AND TEST RESULT

Figure 7: Simulation Result of Buck Converter

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Figure 8: Simulation Result of Boost Converter

IJECSE, Volume 3, Number 3

Hnin Mar Wai and Zaw Min Min Htun

Figure 9: Circuit Construction of Buck and Boost Converter

Figure 10: Circuit Construction of Buck Converter

Table 4: Load variation of Buck Converter

Vin
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12

Load
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

Figure 11: Circuit Construction of Boost Converter

Table 5: Load Variation of Boost Converter

Vout
3.7 V
4.2 V
4.9 V
5.5 V
5.9 V
6.5 V
6.8 V
7.1 V
7.5 V
7.7 V
7.9 V
8.1 V
8.3 V
8.6 V
8.9 V
9.5 V
9.7 V
10.1 V
10.5 V
10.9 V

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Vin
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12

Load
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

Vout
13.7V
14.6V
17.4V
19.2 V
20.6 V
21.5 V
22.6 V
23.7 V
24.9 V
26 V
27.7 V
28.8 V
30.3 V
32 V
32.8 V
33.4 V
35.3 V
35.9 V
36 V
36.9 V

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X. DISCUSSION
There are several types of DC to DC converter and among them, non-isolated DC to DC converter version buck
and boost converter has been employed for this system. It is a high frequency switching element, thus it is required
to obtain a high switching diode, a capacitor and an inductor for energy storage. Furthermore, also needed MOSFET
which is used as a switch for ON and OFF. But high frequency switching device are increased in noise.
XI. CONCLUSION
Solar energy becomes more and more popular and it is very available solar panels in anywhere. Solar energy is
the primary energy source for earth. Some of the energy pollutes the environment to generate the electricity. But,
solar energy is non-polluting, no moving parts and no noise. Therefore, solar energy is used as a source through
battery. Using solar energy, can obtain some advantages are no loss other fuel energy and save the electrical energy.
Almost every laboratory DC power supplies use power transformers to step down the voltage which are very heavy
and bulkier. By using transformer it is very difficult to have good output regulation. By using switch-mode principle
we could overcome advantages are less cost, reduce size and more efficient. This work may have completed a
function but it is a low cost laboratory DC power supply using PIC16F877A microcontroller. The use of the
microcontroller for this design reduces the size. The PIC was successfully programmed to facilitate control for
output voltage. The test carried out on this project give that it is stable, reliable and accurate.
REFERENCE
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]

Hazel Gravel, power semiconductor application laboratory, switching mode power supply.
Introduction to power electronics
Buck power stage in switch mode power supplies and Boost power switch mode power supplies
Switchin moder power supply topologies part (II)
www.microchips.com smps

ISSN: 2277-1956/V3-N3-228-237