Battery Charger Design in a Renewable Energy Portable Power Plant Based on Arduino Uno R3

Abstract

Indonesia is a tropical country that has two seasons, namely the dry season and the rainy season. This makes the earth receive solar power of 1.74 × 1017 Watts every day of which 1–2% is converted into wind energy. According to BPPT in 2018, from the availability of wind energy of 9.29 GW, only 0.0005 GW was used. In addition, Indonesia, which is located in the tropics with high average rainfall (2000–3000 mm/year), provides a large enough potential for air energy. With high rainfall, Indonesia has water energy potential of 75.67 GW and only 4.2 GW has been utilized. According to BPPT, in 2018 coal reserves will be exhausted within 68 years. To overcome this problem, the government is currently doing energy reading which aims to utilize renewable energy that exists in nature. One of the important components in this power plant is the battery which functions as storage where after the battery needs to be recharged. Inappropriate battery recharging process can cause battery performance degradation. This can be overcome by creating a charging battery that can maintain its voltage level. This is done to maintain battery performance and extend battery life. To maintain the output voltage level on the charge controller, a PI control is used. From the tests that have been carried out, it is found that the efficiency of this buck converter system is 85.60–95.7% with an error percentage of 1.373%. From the data obtained, it can be said that the charge controller can work well. So from this research is expected to extend the life and maintain battery performance.