The use of solar energy as source of power is becoming not a choice but a necessity due to the unprecedented growth in the demand and consumption of electrical power for various applications. The solar power from the Photovoltaic (PV) systems is currently used as a standalone PV system or integrated with the electric grid. However, the generated DC power from PV systems is not stable due to weather, atmospheric and environmental conditions, which requires the design of a DC power supply to produce a stable and regulated DC voltage output. In this paper, a new design of power supply is presented that provides a stable output voltage (Vout = +12 V, 0 V, -12V) over significant range of input voltage variations (Vin = +15 V to +50 V) emulating the variation of output voltage of PV systems. The stabilization of the output voltage reflects the effectiveness of the proposed design for photovoltaic systems applications. The system is simulated using NI-MULTISIM software. A satisfactory simulation result is obtained showing a strong promise to practically implement using discrete components.
A Stable DC Power Supply for Photovoltaic Systems