Many people would like to use solar energy to power appliances at home or outdoors in the field. Not only does this save costs, it is also interesting from an ecological point of view. But how do you go about pouring solar energy into batteries? How many solar panels do you need, what kind of batteries are suited, what else do you need? These questions that are answered in this video.

The course “Charging Batteries from Solar” by Microchip University is intended to help you understand how to deal with the dynamic impedance of solar cells, how to apply power-point tracking algorithms like MPPT, how to size your battery and solar array, and how to negotiate between tracking efficiency versus the charge waveform required by your battery chemistry.

In this webinar Dan Holt, application engineer at Microchip Technology, guides you through the course. Assisted by Elektor’s Clemens Valens together they cover the most important aspects of the technology, give background information, show several videos from the course, and go into more detail about the content in these videos.

Charging Batteries from Solar Reference Designs

The full course takes about two hours and completing it is rewarded with a certificate. The accompanying design files for the presented charger reference designs (schematics, gerber and source code) can be found here.
 

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