Realization of autonomous heating plates operating with photovoltaic energy and solar batteries

The work presented in this paper shows the feasibility of an innovative stand-alone solar cooker (hotplate) powered by renewable photovoltaic (PV) energy. This cooker is formed by PV panels (600 W), two DC/DC energy converters, two thermal resistors and a digital control unit. The role of the latter is to manage locally and remotely the operation of the cooker, according to the needs of the users, and to acquire and display the meteorological (lighting and ambient temperature), thermal (temperature of the resistance) and electrical quantities of the system (currents, voltages, powers, yields ...). Experimentation of the system during whole days shows that, for an illumination intensity of 1115 W/ m2 and an ambient temperature of about 22 degrees C, the global electrical power supplied by the PV panels reaches 464 W/peak. The temperature of the thermal resistance reaches 700 degrees C (70 degrees C/s) after 10 s, the efficiency of the converters is 87%, the boiling of one liter of water (temperature 90 degrees C) and the heating of 0.5 L of oil (temperature 270 degrees C) took place after 20 min. and 60 min respectively. In addition, the study on energy storage in solar batteries shows that the energy produced throughout the day can be stored in 160 Ah batteries (i.e. two 75 Ah batteries). All these results show the feasibility of the proposed cooker, and consequently its use in rural as well as urban households for cooking during sunny days and nights . (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Fourth edition of the International Conference on Materials & Environmental Science. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

The work presented in this paper demonstrates the feasibility of an innovative stand-alone solar cooker powered by renewable photovoltaic energy. Experimental results show the system's ability to operate under different lighting conditions with high efficiency in energy conversion and storage capacity.