Electronics for characterizing and using photovoltaics

This paper illustrates several small electric circuits that are developed to aid the design of small, relatively low-power and portable photovoltaic (PV) energy harvesting systems. The targeted purposes of the proposed circuits include the measurement and datalogging of ambient illumination, an active load for measuring PVI- V curves, a fast maximum power operating point tracking (MPPT) implementation, and a circuit for averaging the charging current of burst-mode chargers.