Universal Battery Charger

This book presents the design and construction of the 12 V lead-acid universal battery charger. Universal in the sense that it could charge the battery with any of the four different input power sources such as solar panel, pedal generator, AC source (European & American). Solar and pedal inputs are provided to the charger to encourage the use of non-conventional sources of electrical energy because they are environmental friendly and cheaper to use. A PWM controlled SEPIC converter is designed which in turn has provided the regulated DC output voltage to charge the battery. PIC18F2520 microcontroller is used to provide PWM pulses to the MOSFET switch of the SEPIC converter. Input overvoltage/overcurrent protection, overcharge protection and state of charge indicator are also included in the charger. Results of cost analysis reveal that the designed battery charger outperforms the existing charger.

Autorentext

Irfan Khan received a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from UET, Lahore, Pakistan, in June 2009 and a M.Sc. in Electrical Power Engineering from the University of Greenwich, London, UK, in 2011. He is currently working towards his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA USA.