Solar Powered DC Refrigerator with a Monitoring and Control System

Food, medicine and vaccine in developing countries are often difficult to preserve due to epileptic power supply from the utility companies. In other to reduce the over dependence on the utility company and harness the abundant renewable energy resources. This paper presents the implementation of a solar power DC refrigerator with a microcontroller based temperature monitoring and control system. A DC compressor of 12V/59.8W Danfoss, 12V/100AH battery, a pair of 12V/130W solar panels connected in parallel through a 20A charge controller was used for the refrigerator. ATMEGA16 microcontroller interface with weight, temperature and momentary sensors was programmed in C language to monitor temperature and control the switching ON or OFF of the DC compressor. This project has demonstrated that the energy required for effective operation of DC refrigerator could be harnessed from renewable energy source at reduced cost, the flexibility of its application is vital in developing countries.