Charging Characteristics of Solar Panels with Charging System Using Pulse Width Modulation Control

Electrical energy is one of the energies we use for our daily needs. Currently, there are many renewable energies, including sunlight. With the presence of solar panels, we can harvest sunlight as electricity for a charging system. In the future, renewable energy sources are something urgent and also need to think about how to do fast charging. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the charging characteristics of an off-grid solar panel system at different voltages for several types of loads. In the experiment, we use 100 Wp of solar panels, 10 Ampere of solar charge controller (SCC) with pulse width modulation (PWM) system, 100 Ah 12 Volt of a valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA) battery, and 100 Watt of a lamp as a load. By changing the settings on the solar charge controller, the voltage and current will change which will affect how fast energy is transferred from the solar panel to the load. The results show that for the solar panels with battery load, the increase in voltage will be followed by an increase in current as well as power transferred linearly. However, not for a full load, this is not due to losses in SCC but due to the limited power of the photovoltaic. These characteristics are indispensable for the development of fast charging systems.