A Solar PV Based Onboard Range Extension Scheme For Low Power Electric Vehicles

This paper presents a solar PV based onboard range extension scheme for low-power electric vehicles. The system utilizes a canonical switching inverse buck boost converter (CBBC) as a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) converter. The CBBC has been designed to work under CCM mode of operation. An INC based MPPT control algorithm is utilized to study the performance of the converter. The presented system utilizes solar PV power to save the battery power, and to charge the battery depending on the load on the motor. The system is developed in MATLAB Simulink environment and it has been tested for different dynamic conditions including change in load torque, changing solar Irradiance levels and change in reference speed. The presented results validate the performance of the converter for solar PV based onboard range extension.