Solar Umbrella Using L3C Resonant Converter

This paper proposes a solar patio umbrella using L3C Resonant Converter. The patio umbrella can work as an outdoor workspace and at the same time produce electrical energy from sunlight incident on the solar panels mounted on the umbrella. A L3C resonant converter is used as dc-dc converter which converts the dc output of solar panel to the required value. A microcontroller is used to provide the switching frequency for the converter. To improve the irradiance over the solar panel, a single axis solar tracking system is used. The paper proposes a control algorithm for operation of the L3C resonant converter and a modified perturb and observe algorithm for obtaining the maximum power from solar panel, both simulated in MATLAB Simulink. A prototype of single axis solar tracking system has been made and tested.