The European Space Agency (ESA) developed a solar power system including an innovative regulator. Such regulator improves the power conversion between the solar array and the battery. This invention has an increased efficiency over previous offerings, leading cheaper power systems that dissipate less energy. It also allows more flexibility in the design of the solar arrays, as the technology can accommodate for different configurations without the need to redesign the whole regulator. License agreements are sought.
Description of the offer:
This solar array regulator (SAR) is based on a step-up and step-down converter. The control loop of the boost power cell is highly stable, the control system ensures smooth transition between different operation modes (step-up, step-down, Direct Energy Transfer, DET) and it is stable in all operation modes, e.g. In battery management mode, but also when operating on the voltage and current region of the solar array in MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) mode, in the event of a failure, simultaneous operation of the step-up and step-down cells is avoided, the complexity of the system is low, particularly in case of analog implementation.
Innovations and advantages:
With this invention you will get next benefits:
- Increase the efficiency of the solar array, with less cost and less dissipation.
- Increase the flexibility of Solar array design
- As this inventions applies to any configuration, it would be recurrent, what means less cost.
Commercialisation aspects:
Applications and Markets
The main applications are in solar power generation stations, off-shore or remote facilities or equipments powered by solar energy. It can also be applied to DC-DC converters when the input offers instability such as in power grids, batteries, buildings, electric vehicles, etc.
Intellectual property status
Currently patented and looking for license agreements.