Design of Energy Management System for a Small Solar-powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

An energy management system (EMS) is necessary to provide the UAV propulsion system with the energy from multiple power sources. This paper presents a new control strategy of EMS for a small solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The EMS based on the value of DC bus voltage can efficiently manage the power from PV modules and the storage system, which support the UAV operation steadily even under potential rapidly varying atmospheric condition. In this EMS, PV modules can operate at multi-mode by self-adaption control strategy and storage system can be flexibly controlled to coordinate system energy power flow. The results of simulation and experiments are included to verify the effectiveness of the proposed EMS.