A method of appropriate electrical array reconfiguration management for photovoltaic powered car

The acceleration from the starting state of a photovoltaic powered car is not favorable when compared with that of current automobiles. This results from the limitation of photovoltaic qualification. In this paper,a method of electrical array reconfiguration management which is appropriate for effectively driving a photovoltaic (PV) powered car is presented. For the purpose of increasing the acceleration, the methods of electrical array reconfiguration (EAR; parallel, series and parallel-series) are used and managed according to the driving states (initial movement state, speed accelerating state, high speed state). Since the parallel method provides much voltage and torque, it is used for maintaining the velocity at a certain speed. Then the parallel-series method is used for accelerating speed after the car started while both speed and torque is required. Fuzzy logic is applied to determine the electrical array reconfiguration automatically according to the driving situation. For testing the efficiency, a photovoltaic powered car with 2.65 m/sup 2/ solar cell is established, The results of initial torque of the motor in various types are that the parallel provides 1.4 times more torque than the parallel-series type, and more than that of the series type by 2.5 times. So the parallel array reconfiguration type is suitable for starting a car. In testing the maximum speed of a motor, the results are that the series type has motor speed twice that of the parallel-series type, and 4.1 times more than the parallel one. So the series array is appropriate for a car at high speed. The acceleration of a motor in photovoltaic powered car by this method revealed the better results approximately by 38 percent when compared with the series type which is the best for the unarranged cell.