Design and implementation of a micro controller based portable solar charge controller tester

As a sustainable and alternative source of renewable energy, utilization of solar power has become immensely popular nowadays. In Bangladesh, there are more than 4 million SHSs which have been installed till January, 2015 [1]. Under this Solar Home System (SHS) program of IDCOL, there are a number of partner organizations (PO), providing their supports for establishing remote rural area electrification program under SHS. Solar charge controller plays crucial role and ensures reliability, better performance and durability of the installed systems. By complying with the standards of the solar charge controller (CC), one can make SHS program durable and feasible for rural electrification program. Therefore, Centre for Energy Research (CER) of United International University (UIU) designed a portable charge controller tester which can measure the parameters according to the set standards of the solar charge controller of IDCOL. By this solar charge controller tester (SCT), LVD, HVD, LVR, HVR, charging & discharging efficiencies can be measured with testing of reverse polarity protection, reverse current leakage protection etc. The main focus of this paper is to highlight the salient features of the designed solar charge controller tester. A number of charge controllers were tested with the implemented SCT and the test results found to be highly satisfactory and the accuracy of measurement was within one percent.