Abstract
The list of photovoltaic (PV) applications grows longer every day with high consideration for system efficiency. For instance, in spite of many recent PV aircraft designs, aircraft propulsion was mainly reserved for nonelectric motors. Lately, the Solar Impulse flight across the world shows the possibilities of larger PV powered electric aircraft. In order to obtain this goal efficiency of flight, PV conversion, power converters and electric drives have to be maximized. These demands led to a 63.4 m wingspan. The purpose of this paper is to present that PV power could be used for improving the performance of fixed-wing radio-controlled aircrafts with smaller wingspans (1 m). In order to improve the performance of battery powered electric unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), a model without PV cells (commercial Li-ion battery powered UAV) was compared with UAV powered both from battery and PV modules. This work shows details about Boost DC/DC converter and PV system design for small size fixed-wing electric UAVs, investigating the possibility of the application of PV powered drones, as well. Theoretical findings involving efficiency improvements have been confirmed by measurements combining the improvements in electrical engineering, microcontroller application and aerodynamics.
Highlights
Compared to the Aquila project, the contribution of this paper is to investigate the possibility of obtaining such results for smaller unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)
Tests, multiple power converters could be used in order to improve the resilience of the UAV PV system in regards to the shade problem [28,41,43]; otherwise, In orderconverters to decreasecould the influence of rapidweight wind changes, tests were conducted duringlonger sunny photovoltaic add additional which UAVs cannot sustain during weather
After PV system installation on a UAV, flying stability emerges as a problem
Summary
At the beginning of the 21st century, solar cells were generally proposed for stationary applications, mostly on flat roofs [7]. Examples of such an approach are documented in the literature, where photovoltaic sources along with LED lighting are used for street lights and other urban applications [8,9]. It seems that global energetics will be governed by photovoltaic sources for all applications where its use is possible (including mobile devices, drones and similar)
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