Design of a solar charge controller set point and lead acid battery capacity tester

Abstract

This aim of this thesis is the designing of testing instrument for SHS. SHS is a growing sector in our country. In every SHS batteries and a DC charge controller are used. But capacities of those batteries or the performance of the DC charge controllers are not always verified before use. Due to that the system performance may become a problem for the consumers. These instruments can measure the capacity of a battery and sense the different set-points of a DC charge controller. From the measured data the capacity of the battery can be measured and can be decided whether it’s good enough to use in a SHS or a battery which is already being used should to be replaced according to standard specification. By sensing the set-points of a DC Charge Controller we can compare with the standard set points and decide if the Charge Controller is good enough to use in a SHS. The purpose of this project is to determine the quality of the batteries and the DC charge controllers can be measured before using it on a SHS, so the consumer can be secured from a faulty system. We have used “Arduino IDE”, open source software is used for the programming and communication interface between the computer and the data acquiring circuits. The developed systems have been in the laboratory of IE. It is found that the developed instrument works properly.