PV system design for an RC plane

Abstract

Solar energy is being increasingly used in many sectors as it is clean energy which requires minimum operation and maintenance costs [1]. One of the potential _elds of applications of solar energy is the aviation industry, speci_cally in small aircraft and monitoring devices. Many research projects have been conducted in developing solar energy based aircrafts, like Helios and Solar Impulse [2][3]. The total energy that can be harnessed by using solar panels in the aircraft may not alone be su_cient to provide enough power required for the aircraft due to several reasons including additional weights of components (battery, converter) and requirements of large surface area [4][5]. Therefore, one of the attractive options is to use solar technology as an additional source of energy for extending the ight time or range of an aircraft. PV technology o_ers the ability to provide an uninterrupted longer term power supply as energy can be continuously harvested during ight and stored for later use. This extension possibility of ight time has become increasingly important in various _elds such as environmental monitoring and military applications in manned and unmanned aircrafts. This BSc thesis is a part of the `Solar Plane` bachelor graduation project. The main goal of the project was to extend the ight time of a small commercially available aircraft using photovoltaic (PV) technology. The project was split into 3 sub-groups: PV (Photovoltaic), power electronics (PE) and control. This thesis describes the design and implementation of the PV system/layout and the software used for maximum power point tracking (MPPT).