constant current voltage limited charger lm350
This is a very interesting question, in my opinion.
If you talk solar, then you have a number of parameters to take under consideration.
- Solar panel voltage
- Battery voltage
- Type of battery (lead acid, gel, etc)
- Current requirement of the inverter if used with a UPS
The best I could come up with is a digital solution using the very good A to D from Linear technology (24 bit resolution 0.5 ppm offset, 0.55 uV noise 110 dB rejection @ 50 or 60 Hz) and a micro such as the Motorola HC12. The end result is pretty nice. The battery is even disconnected from the UPS if the load requirement is low enough to be provided directly by the solar panel!
Due to the fact that such equipment can be placed outside where temperature can easily raise to 48 Celsius degrees, it is quite a very challenging analog design! So I forgot about analog and used pure digital technique.
Results are economic, no drift in time or no adjustment with 10 turns pot here and there... All parameters are programmable and all the floating parameters are taking care of in the digital world. A 4 lines x 20 characters LCD display the status and a simple keypad is used to modify and store in the HC12 EEprom the various desired parameters.
In short, efficient, economic and maintenance free! Try to do the same in the analog world... (I mean discrete components) and you would end up with a very large monster!
ASIC said:
What if the charging current comes from a set of solar panels and the current cannot be quaranteed?
ASIC