Design and Performance of an On-Board/On-Road Electric Rickshaw PV Roof-Top Battery Charger

Popularity of electric rickshaw (e-Rickshaw) is gaining manifold in semi-developed countries for providing ease of first and last mile public transportation without any environment challenging pollution threat. But to make more cycles and from last destination battery charge condition is still a big challenge for e-Rickshaw's owners. To overcome this issue “an on-road/on-board e-rickshaw battery charger is designed”, to keep the battery charge condition at near to nominal, at least during day time through mounting a single 500W photovoltaic (PV) solar panel at its roof-top with a coupled inductor based buck-boost single-ended primary inductance converter (SEPIC) to reduce the weight and cost, and to increase the efficiency and over all power density with maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm for on-road charging even while driving. Other benefits of on-road charging are that, battery's charge-discharge cycle is reduced hence life is increased. Moreover, battery never goes into deep discharge. A hardware prototype is developed with Microchip DSPIC microcontroller with MOSFETs and Schottky diodes.