PSPICE Modeling of Solar Panel and Battery

Hello All,

How would I go about modeling a lead acid battery and solar panel in SPICE?

I'm figuring simple voltage sources aren't accurate representations. When I parallel a 12V source and 14.8V source and probe the shared node I get 12V. When I swap the values in the sources and probe again I get

14.8V...?!

Any suggestions or sources would begreatly appreciated.

John

Reply to
jecottrell
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For the solar panel:

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... getting the resistor values correct is not going to be easy without having an actual cell around to measure, but if you're just doing rough calculations you can make the shunt resistor infinite (remove it) and the series resistor small (perhaps around an ohm -- depends highly on how big of a panel you're simulating).

The current source's output is directly proportional to the insolation ("sunshine" :-) ) received.

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Kolstad

One other thing... that Wikipedia entry is for a *single cell*, which will get you about 0.6v -- for a standard 12V panel, you end up with a bunch of single cells in series. In practice you usually use 24 to get an open-circuit voltage of around 14.4V -- some partially shaded cells, loading, etc., drops this; the idea is that you still have a useful 12V output.

See also:

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There's lot of good info on PV out there -- the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia used to have an on-line course about them, which was surprisingly good.

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Kolstad

Joel,

Thanks for the help. I tried fiddling with your info and some other stuff I found. I didn't have much luck generating meaningful results.

I found a book on Amazon and searched on its title. This website has the files from the book and looks like it should be informative.

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I will see what I can deduce from the info....

John

Reply to
jecottrell

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