Reverse engineering a TL494 based Chinese

Author	Message
LadyN Guru Joined: 26/01/2019 Location: United States Posts: 408	Posted: 07:21pm 22 Mar 2019         davef said   Is a boost-converter a good starting point for a MPPT battery charger? Normally panel voltages are higher than the battery voltage. I look forward to a circuit diagram for this unit, maybe it will help explain the problem I have been having with a lower-power version using the same PCB. Good question Dave, Depends on the use case I think. I am not designing or using this for battery charging. My use case is that I don't want a battery. I only want to offset grid usage by the available solar power. So while a buck convertor is needed to charge battery (V_PV_out >> V_BATTERY), in my case, a boost-converter is needed (V_PV_MPP_out << V_GRID) specially if I want to load share with V_GRID (rectified grid). The warpverter comes in if I NEED AC OUT so my DC and AC needs are taken care of. The challenge with using a pure uC based MPPT boost-converter is that the uC has too much to do all at once. I am hoping to outsource the boost-converter math to this boost-converter and let the uC (ESP32 in this case) just worry about the MPPT part. In theory.   davef said     Quote   Input reverse protection: YES I suspect that this is doing something strange at low supply voltage, ie below their rating of 10V. I would really like to continue that thread and am sad you gave up. Maybe we should start this project first and armed with that knowledge resume that thread.Edited by LadyN 2019-03-24