System design and circuit implementation of a solar powered car

Abstract

The project is about the designing and implementation of the electrical drive system of a solar powered car. The solar panel collects energy from the sun during the day time and stores this in a lead-acid battery through a charge controller that to drive the motor of the car. The charge controller circuit has been used to supply the battery with the maximum amount charge possible, while protecting it from overcharge by the solar panels or the electric source as well as over discharge by the motor. Functionality of both the driver circuit and the charge controller circuit are controlled by the PIC16F876A microcontroller. For the charge controller circuit, the PIC detects the current and voltage of the battery and thereby, according to the state of the battery, it feeds back a Pulse-Width Modulated (PWM) flow of charge from the panel to the battery. As the whole thesis project is based on Direct Current Power System, Direct Current (DC) motors are worthier in this case. DC motor has become familiar as an essential drive configuration or pattern for many applications widely in terms of power and speed. The number of applications implemented by DC motor will continue grow for the predictable future because of the quality of easy controlling and the outstanding performance of the DC motors. The main motive of this thesis project is to design a speed controller system or driver circuit for DC motor in both the theoretical and practical way.