Microcontroller based smart charge controller for standalone solar photovoltaic power systems

This paper presents a cost efficient PV charge controller with the function to disconnect and reconnect battery and load during battery overcharging or under discharging. The proposed charge controller is equipped with LCD to display the temperature, battery voltage and current flow through the battery. Output of these 3 inputs are used to obtain the accurate and efficient disconnecting/ reconnecting action which is capable of protecting the battery and the load whereas LED indicator is featured to show the status of the systems. The source code for the PIC microcontroller is written in C code which is more user friendly than using assembly language. Furthermore, this smart charge controller is developed to reduce the current market price of charge controller to an affordable level. This project deals with the design of an intelligent charge controller using PIC microcontroller to control and coordinate the activity in charge controller.