Design, Control, and Evaluation of a Photovoltaic Snow Removal Strategy Based on a Bidirectional DC-DC Converter for Photovoltaic–Electric Vehicle Application

Salma Elakkad, Mohamed Hesham, Hany Ayad Bastawrous () and Peter Makeen
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Salma Elakkad: Electrical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, The British University in Egypt (BUE), Cairo 11837, Egypt
Mohamed Hesham: Electrical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, The British University in Egypt (BUE), Cairo 11837, Egypt
Hany Ayad Bastawrous: Department of Microelectronics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands
Peter Makeen: Electrical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, The British University in Egypt (BUE), Cairo 11837, Egypt

Energies, 2024, vol. 17, issue 24, 1-11

Abstract: A novel self-heating technique is proposed to clear snow from photovoltaic panels as a solution to the issue of winter snow accumulation in photovoltaic (PV) power plants. This approach aims to address the shortcomings of existing methods. It reduces PV cell wear, resource loss, and safety risks, without the need for additional devices. A self-heating current is applied to the solar panel to melt the snow covering its surface, which is then allowed to slide off the panel due to gravity. The proposed system consists of a bidirectional DC-DC converter, which removes the snow cover by heating the solar PV modules using electricity from the grid or electric vehicle (EV) batteries. It also charges the EV battery pack and/or supplies the DC bus when no EV is plugged into the charging station. For each mode of operation, a current-controlled system was implemented using a PI controller and a model predictive controller (MPC). The MPC approach achieved a faster rise time, shorter settling time, very low current ripples, and high stability for the proposed system. Specifically, the settling time decreased from 9 ms and 155 ms when using the PI controller at 20 µs and 35 µs with the MPC controller for both the buck and boost modes, respectively.

Keywords: bidirectional converter; buck converter; boost converter; PV cells; electric vehicles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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