Design and Simulation of a Solar Parking System to meet all Energy needs of 10 Electric Cars

Abstract

Electric vehicles are a growing segment of the green transport industry and are helping reduce the carbon footprint of the global transport sector. However, EV adoption is slow due to the lack of charging infrastructure throughout the Newfoundland. We propose the design and control of a solar PV parking system that also serves as a charging station for 10 electric vehicles. The main source of power for our system would be solar PV and a battery bank for the storage of excess energy to be used during off-daylight hours. The sizing, design, and feasibility analysis of the system were performed in HOMER Pro. After that, the major components of the system were modeled in Simulink including PV, Battery, inverter, Load, and Controller. The solar charge controller utilized in our design used a DC-DC buck-boost converter running on the Perturbation and Observation (P&O) Algorithm. The system design details and simulation results are included in the paper.