Design and Implementation of a Microcontroller Based

12V-7A/10A Smart Solar Battery Charge Controller

A.S.M. Jiaul Hoque1*, Sheik Md. Kazi Nazrul Islam1,2, Md. Abubakar Siddik1, Sabbir Ahamed1
1
University of Information Technology and Sciences (UITS), Dhaka-1212, Bangladesh
2
University of Wollongong, Australia
*venus4erros@gmail.com

Abstract— In this study, a microcontroller based solar powered lead battery charge controller with efficient so-
lar panel and some physical LED’s which can significantly states the condition of the battery and the whole cir-
cuit is developed. It comprise of using microcontroller based charging algorithms. This project can be divided
into two main parts: hardware and software development. The hardware development includes, solar panel con-
nection, charging and control circuit. The software development include, microcontroller programming tech-
nique, controller algorithms, Proteus analysis etc. A 12V-7A/10A DC battery charges frequently by the sun in
the day and discharges in the night. The whole charging and discharging process automatically controlled by the
preprogrammed microcontroller 12F675.The higher cut off voltage of the battery is set as 13.8V and the lower
cut off voltage is set as 9V by the microcontroller coding for the battery and load safety. There are 2 output load
connector of +6V and +12V connectivity. Using a 5W solar panel it took 6 hours to complete charging of a 12V
generic lead acid battery. A simple 12V LED light is used as load output and the circuit gave 1.2A rated current
and last longer than 4 hours. The blinking of LED indicates the battery states and even the short circuit condi-
tion or overload condition of the circuit. The circuit can operate at a maximum current of 22A at the room tem-
perature with power MOSFET IRF540. Proteus ISIS 7.7 is used for system design and simulation, and CCS
professional Edition (software) is used to write the program code and burning the microcontroller 12F675. Fi-
nally, Proteus ARES 7.7 is used to design the printed circuit board (PCB), for practical implementation.

Keywords— Microcontroller, Charge Controller, Solar Energy, Proteus, Code Controller Studio (CCS)

I. INTRODUCTION tomatically. This is possible through the technology

called microprocessor or microcontroller based
Photovoltaic power systems, a promising source system.
The application of microcontroller based
of energy for the future, are actually solar panels
devices are continuing to rise with its greater
referred by the industry as solar electric modules or
processing speed and flexible control; and the elec-
PV modules. The modules can be wired as series or
trical appliances are getting more miniaturized, less
parallel arrays to produce higher voltages and cur-
costly and low power consuming. Microcontrollers
rents. In general, standalone PV system also known
reduces the number of chips and the amount of
as off grid system consists of a PV array which
wiring and circuit board space, which is useful to
converts sunlight to direct-current electricity, a
produce equivalent systems using separate chips.
control system which regulates battery charging,
Furthermore, each pin of a microcontroller inter-
discharging and operation of the load, energy sto-
faces several internal peripherals, with the pin
rage in the form of secondary batteries and loads or
function selected by software. This allows a wider
appliances. A charge controller is one of functional
variety of applications than single specific func-
major components in PV systems which is used to
tions.
maintain the proper charging voltage on the batte-
This project implements, designing and
ries. The charge controller regulates the charge to
controlling of a digital solar battery charge control-
the batteries preventing any overcharging. So a
ler which will automatically ON/OFF on the pre-
good, solid and reliable PV charge controller is a
programmed voltage levels in the microcontroller
key component of any PV battery charging system
which will be helpful to get rid of overcharging,
to achieve systems maximum efficiency.
set as upper cut off voltage at 13.8V and lower cut
Currently there are some analogue solar
off voltage at 9V. The battery becomes damaged by
battery charge controller in the industry which has
over charging and the load becomes unstable at low
no overcharging protector feature and thus the bat-
voltages. There will be two output as load which
tery damages quickly. There is no voltage level or
are +12V and +6V. Any rated voltage device with-
charging LED indicator and no short cir-
in this range may be used as load. The circuit will
cuit/overload protector is present. People want
also perform short circuit and overload protection.
smarter artificial intelligence which will work au-
 II. CIRCUIT COMPONENTS & DIAGRAM

A microcontroller PIC12F675 is used as the central

unit of the system. Two LED (Light Emitting Di-
ode) is used to sense the status of two different
voltage levels.

Table 1 Components of the system

Figure 2: Schematic diagram of the system

III. CIRCUIT DESIGN & CODING

3.1. DC input and Battery charging section

A solar panel or a DC voltage Source can be used

as +12V dc power supply. A pin from microcon-
A power supply with solar panel or DC voltage troller is connected to L7805 through R5 and
source is constructed to establish a dc voltage of another line is connected through capacitor C1
+12V to provide necessary biasing of microcontrol- from battery to solar panel. Another capacitor C2 is
ler and other circuitry. Two LED (red) are con- connected to the microcontroller and to L7805. A
nected with the +12V terminal. Here, one red LED diode D1 is connected with L7805 and to pin2 of
(D1) is showing the status of the battery and the microcontroller. The capacitor C1 and C2 both are
other (D4) showing the charging or discharging connected to the solar panel for storing charge to
state of the battery. Two output voltage of +12V & the battery. A resistor RV1 is connected to capaci-
+6V are exist as it is sometimes necessary to have tor to restrict extra flow of charge to from solar
different voltage levels for our home appliances. panel battery. Another pin of microcontroller is
The LED (D1) blinks fast when the charge is full connected to MOSFET (Q1).
and vice versa it blinks slowly when the battery
voltage is low. It gives a clear view of the charging 3.2. DC-DC converter and the load side
state of the battery. Another LED (green) is con-
nected as the output of +6V. When the +12V out- The DC-DC converter consists of the power circuit
put is available then the +6V LED will automati- and the control circuit, for the power conversion. In
cally blink as load. The two red LED are directly the power circuit, the switching transistor (MOS-
connected with the microcontroller. The output FET is mainly used due to the high speed switching
terminals are shown as J2 for +12V and J3 for +6V. requirement) switches the input DC voltage accord-
J1 is defined as the input from solar panel or DC ing to the drive signal from the control circuit, and
voltage source. The whole circuit diagram and then supplies the AC voltage to the transformer.
schematic diagram are shown in the Figure1&2. The transformer changes the AC voltage, and recti-
fies it through the diodes. In the smoothing circuit,
the on-off DC voltage after the rectification is
smoothed, and it is then changed in the auxiliary
battery. The control circuit controls the output vol-
tage to output the specified voltage even in case
there is a disturbed change in the main battery vol-
tage. However, the auxiliary battery requires a pre-
cise voltage charge to it. Since the voltage drop not
negligible, the terminal voltage of the auxiliary
battery is detected directly, and then the output
voltage is controlled so that the voltage at the aux-
iliary battery terminal reaches the specified value.
This is known as "battery sensing control". In this
case, the sensing point is switched from the aux-
Figure 1: Circuit diagram of the System iliary battery terminal to the output terminal of the
DC/DC converter. This is known as "converter
sensing control" or "local control”. In figure 3 the 3.4. Programming the Microcontroller 12F675
main portion of the circuit is shown. Here the +12V (using CCS)
output terminal is referred as J2. Another output
terminal of +6V is referred as J3. A DC-DC con- The 12F675 uses the built in feature EEPROM
verter named MC34063A is referred as U3. From which erases the written program inside of micro-
the figure, a connection is made from the pin6 of controller, without ultraviolet light. The software
MC34063A to the microcontroller PIC12F675 “CCS professional edition” is used to write the
through L7805. A diode D5 is connected to induc- program for 12F675 and the following steps are
tor L1 from the DC-DC converter. The DC-DC followed.
converter switches the MOSFET (Q1) to the DC
voltage supply according to the signal of microcon- Step 1: Using the software ‘“CCS professional edi-
troller. A MOSFET (Q2) is connected to the output tion”, the program is typed; then it is compiled and
terminal. It is because, when the MOSFET get after being successful, a HEX file is generated. The
pulse from the converter it acts as switching device HEX file is generation is shown in Figure 5.
and then drive the DC voltage to the load.
Step 2: Using the software the chip signature is
checked which ensures the chip and using the EE-
PROM (electrically erasable programmable read-
only memory) feature of 12F675 the microcontrol-
ler is erased.

Figure 3: DC-DC converter with load side

3.3. Input side and Output load side

When the solar panel or DC voltage source will

plug in with the battery, it will charge the battery
and D4 will show the charging status. When the Figure 5: writing microcontroller coding in CCS
battery will be fully charged D1 will show the sta-
tus and the microcontroller (PIC12F675) will send
the logic to the MOSFET to get switched on. Then
the charge will start to flow to the output terminal
(+12V, J2) through the MOSFET. Then the con-
nected load will be in “on” state. The load will
work until the battery discharges. When the battery
voltage continues to discharge, the connected load
will gradually come to the “off” state. When the
battery voltage will decrease under +9V, the con-
nected load will be completely disconnected, then Figure 6: Burning the Microcontroller by
the MOSFET will also be switched off. Similar entering the program code
case continued when the load will be connected to
+6V, J3 terminal. IV. RESULT & DISCUSSION

The objective of the project was to make a device

that will control the voltage automatically without
changing current. That means the device will keep
the current at a constant value. When the voltage
will be charged over +13.8V then the battery will
be automatically disconnected from the microcon-
troller through MOSFET (Q2). That means the
MOSFET will be switched off. When the battery
voltage will be less than +9V then the battery will
reconnect to the solar panel through switching
MOSFET (Q2). Two LEDs shows the charging
status. It should be mentioned that when the vol-
Figure 4: Input and output section tage level is less than +9V then the load will be
automatically disconnected from the battery and if
panel voltage is present there, it will start charging
again.

4.1. Proteus ISIS 7.7 Simulation result

The output simulation result using Proteus ISIS 7.7

for Lower and Upper cut off voltage are shown in
figure 7 & 8.

Figure 9: Pressing the ‘ARES’ tab of ISIS

toolbar for PCB design

Figure 7: Lower cutoff voltage (discharging state)

<9V

Figure 10: Proteus ARES ISIS 7.7 for PCB

design layout

Figure 8: Upper cutoff voltage (charging state)

>13.8V

4.2 Design of Printed Circuit Board (PCB)

To precede the design of PCB, the ARES tab of the

Proteus ISSI toolbar is pressed and the total circuit
components, their values and their information of
interconnection are transferred to the Proteus
ARES. The component tab is pressed to move in Figure 11: Proteus ARES ISIS 7.7 (upper view)
component mode and PCB designing is used from
4.3 View of Practically Implemented System
the list of components at left column. Design rules
of the Proteus ARES for PCB design are shown in The completed printed circuit board (PCB) design
Figure 9, 10 & 11. is printed on a tracing paper and fabricated on an
insulating material for integrating the system com-
ponents. The view of practically implemented sys-
tem is shown in Figure 12 & 13.
 troller has been made successfully. The total sys-
tem is automated, intelligent and controlled to its
operation. Three LED's shows the battery state,
overload or short circuit condition. The circuit can
handle maximum 22A of current for load using
high efficient power MOSFET (IRF540). Silver
coated heat sink is used attached with the MOSFET
(IRF540) as these kind of circuit runs all through
the day in outside with heavy humidity and little
Figure 12: +12V DC fan operating as load risk of burn protection. The circuit is very light and
connected with DC power supply thin which assures it as a portable device. The total
system is integrated compactly in a PCB board and
very chip microcontroller is used which makes it
customer demanding rather than any other product
of the market.

Further works may be focused on controlling and

monitoring the voltage levels by using a LCD dis-
play and a buzzer may add for low voltage, higher
voltage, and short circuit or over load detection.
Figure 13: Load is disconnected at lower
cut off voltage and battery starts charging
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A general comparison between the previous tech- [1] Steven F. Barrett & Daniel Pack, "Microcontrollers
nology and the implemented project is shown in Fundamentals for Engineers and Scientists", (pp.29 -
Table 2. 48), 2006
[2] Miro Zeman,Delft, "Introduction to photovoltaic solar
Table 2: Comparison with previous work energy",(pp.1-2),2008
[3] World Commission on Environment and Development
(WCED). Oxford University Press (1987)
[4] Richard J. Comp, "Practical Photovoltaic's: Electricity
from Solar Cells", 2nd edition (pp.15-17), 2011
[5] BREY B. BARRY, "The Intel Microprocessors
8086/8088, 80186/80188, 80286, 80386, 80486, Pentium,
and Pentium Pro Processor Architecture, Programming,
and Inter-facing",8th edition, (pp. 2 -38), 2002
[6] Thomas L. Floyd, "Electronic Devices: Conventional
Current Version",7th edition (pp.130-135), 2004
[7] A hand book of The U.S. Department of Energy, Sandia
National Laboratories.1st edition (pp.1-3), 2010
[8] Microchips: www.microchips.com
[9] Datasheet Catalogue: www.datasheetcatalogue.com
[10] Imran Chowdhury, Shuza Binzaid, "Technically
Challenged Solar Energy Consumers in Developing
Countries and Issues Caused by Solar Power System
Seller Companies”, International Research Journal.
[11] Jonathan W. Kimball, Brian T. Kuhn "A System Design
Approach for Unattended Solar Energy Harvesting
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[12] Firoze A. Siddiqui1 and Mark Ellery "Micro Power
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Enterprise For Rural Bangladesh" 4th International
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V. CONCLUSION

An automated (artificially intelligent) microcon-

troller based solar battery 12V-7A/10A charge con-