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A number of market research agencies expect that by 2030, the share of renewable energy sources (such as wind power and solar power generation) in total global energy consumption will increase significantly. The promotion of energy-saving, emission-reduction and green development has set new requirements for all industries, and meeting the energy-saving design in the era of low-carbon economy has become an important manifestation of the competitiveness of energy companies and electronic products.
Market Opportunities and Challenges
The development of renewable energy is a general trend. Solar energy and wind power are part of the smart grid and belong to the category of distributed generation. The promotion of smart grid development can bring many advantages, such as the use of two-way communication to achieve demand management, ease power peaks, quickly identify faults, avoid power outages, thereby achieving higher energy efficiency, reliability, and security; smart integration of new alternatives Energy, and provide electricity for electric and hybrid vehicles; better adjust energy supply and demand, more efficient use of power plants and power grids, reduce carbon emissions; provide a dynamic fee schedule to help customers optimize total electricity consumption and electricity bills, Improving customer service; and remote meter reading and remote power-on and power-off can save manpower costs and improve operational efficiency.
Under the consensus of advancing sustainable development, China is currently vigorously developing industries such as solar energy and wind power, and its prospects are promising. Among them, the technology in the field of solar energy has become increasingly mature. Solar power generation has achieved considerable development. Solar street lighting has also become increasingly popular. In addition, in order to improve the power infrastructure for the introduction of a new generation of smart grids, the Chinese government has set a grand goal of investing 4 trillion yuan by 2020, including the concept of “Strong & Smart Grid†at the Shanghai World Expo. Show.
However, while developing renewable energy sources and upgrading existing power grids, it also faces many challenges. For the semiconductor industry, the biggest challenge is energy conversion, because the key to the development of renewable energy is to optimize energy efficiency. Take solar-powered LED street lighting as an example. This application requires efficient and reliable solar panel charge controllers, as well as key devices such as LED drivers. The demand is considerable. Smart grids also require many electronic components from power generation, distribution and field area networks to smart meter communications and home area networks. These include power factor controllers, AC-DC and DC-DC controllers, voltage regulators, MOSFETs, triacs, power line carrier modems, and filtering , Input/Output (I/O) and data protection, line drivers and signal amplifiers, LCD backlight drivers, EEPROM memory, and smart card interfaces.
Examples of Energy Efficient Solutions for Smart Grids
1. Plan to improve the solar energy efficiency of solar panels
In recent years, the industry has been paying more and more attention to street lighting using renewable clean energy solar energy. For solar street lights, it is very important to improve the solar energy efficiency of solar panels. The voltage-current (VI) characteristics of solar panels exhibit nonlinearity and variability, and it is very difficult to obtain the maximum amount of electrical energy from them. This requires solar LED street light charging controllers and other related electronic circuits (usually implemented by microcontrollers) to use effective control methods as much as possible to improve energy efficiency.
ON Semiconductor's CS51221 enhanced voltage-mode PWM controller is a device that improves the energy efficiency of solar panels. It can control the solar panel battery charging, support the maximum peak power tracking (MPPT) function, provide compensation for the changing VI characteristic curve of the solar cell, optimize the solar cell power output, improve the energy efficiency, and make the battery charge to the optimal power.
In the application circuit, it is necessary to select a suitable topology for the CS51221. The topology must be able to reduce the solar panel output voltage to 12V in the case of one battery, and can easily be modified in the case of two or more batteries, supporting boost to 24V. The CS51221 itself can be configured as a forward, flyback, or boost topology. In a reference design for solar panel charge control applications, ON Semiconductor chose a flyback topology.
In applications, maximum peak power tracking is achieved by dynamically adjusting the current limit at the ISET pin. Once the input voltage drops pulse by pulse, the current limit will be reduced until the input voltage recovers. This method eliminates the need for expensive microcontrollers. The charging controller thus implemented will find the peak power point and dynamically adjust it to match the changing power characteristics. In fact, by using the maximum peak power tracking technology, more than 30% of the charge can be transferred from the solar panel to the battery, so that solar street lighting systems can use smaller-sized solar panels, which brings significant cost benefits. Figure 1 is a schematic diagram of a solar panel charge control application using the ON Semiconductor CS51221 controller.
2. Smart Grid Scheme
Today's power grids have become larger, safer, and more energy efficient than before, but their intelligence is still low, so smart grids are an important development trend today.
ON Semiconductor has invested and is investing heavily in smart grid R&D covering all product lines, including power conversion analog ICs, signal ICs (such as low noise amplifiers), power discrete devices (high voltage MOSFETs, IGBTs, rectifiers), and mixed signal ICs (smart cards Interface ICs, clocks and timing ICs, communication ICs such as PLC modems, logic ICs, memory ICs, and standard discrete devices (protectors, filters).
The heart of the smart grid is the smart meter. With the help of the smart meter, the power company can know how much power the user uses at any time, so that they can provide differentiated pricing and help the user to optimize their overall power consumption and electricity expenses.
The fully integrated power line carrier (PLC) modem AMIS-49587 is a key device in the application of Figure 2. The device provides a highly integrated, standards-compliant, low-power PLC solution that can be used in areas such as smart power automatic meter reading and management, street lighting control, smart power plugs, and building automation. The AMIS-49587 utilizes ON Semiconductor's mixed-signal technology to integrate analog modem front-ends and digital post-processing functions in an integrated circuit.