Studying the Effect of Using a Low Power PV and DC-DC Boost Converter on the Performance of the Solar Energy PV System

Wireless sensor network has become an increasing interest for research. The major limitation in the WSN nodes design is finite battery capacity that can only operate for finite lifetime depending on the duty cycle of the operation. In this paper, a solar photovoltaic PV will be studied with its nonlinear characteristics curves. It can be employed in a solar energy harvesting system to enhance its performance and to address the problem of finite battery capacity in WSN. The solar panels with small size areas linked with a low power harvesting circuits can supply an alternative power source for its node. Simulation of the DC-DC Boost converter will be included. The efficient design for the solar harvesting system components which are PV panel, DCDC converters, Control Unit, and WSN node will be investigated. In general, there are two efficient ways for solar energy harvesting algorithms which are; Pulse Width Modulation and Maximum Power Point Tracking control algorithms. The desired system in this paper focuses on increasing the output voltage, output power and overall solar harvesting system efficiency using two control techniques than the other related works. The design of the solar energy harvesting system models are simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK. From the simulation results, the desired solar harvesting system model has a higher overall efficiency using maximum power point control algorithm.