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Resonant Ballast for Photovoltaic Powered Street

Lighting System in Remote Rural Area


Tanes Tanitteerapan and Suriyan Pan-A
Power Electronics and Circuit Systems Laboratory, Department of Electrical Technology Euducation, King Mongkut’s University of
Technology Thonburi, Bangkok 10140, Thailand, E-Mail: tanes_kmutt@yahoo.com

Abstract: This paper, electronic resonant ballast for a small photovoltaic powered street lighting system in remote rural area was pro-
posed. The street lighting system was designed for rural area where the electrical transmission line cannot be commonly serviced and it
is the cascade systems of the solar arrays, switching battery charger, and electronics ballast with small fluorescent lamp. The ballast is
a simple single switch inverter having low harmonic sinusoidal output voltage waveform. E class inverter operation was selected to
perform the ballast due to it has benefits of high efficiency and low harmonic distortion at output voltage waveform that is be better
than the general square waveform electronics ballast, which has high harmonics voltage distortion. Circuit implementation of the bal-
last consists of an input inductor, an active switch device, and a series L-C resonant circuit. The ballast output voltage was oscillated as
high frequency sinusoidal voltage waveform due to operation of the L-C resonant circuit that connected to fluorescent lamp. The active
switch device was controlled by fixed duty ratio and switching frequency PWM controller. The control circuit was done by using a
simple well-known PWM controller IC number SG3524. To verify the resonant ballast design, the circuit experimentation of 10Watts
of electronic resonant ballast was applied. From the result, the 12 VDC from battery was generated to be 165 VAC of high frequency
sinusoidal voltage waveform, low harmonic voltage, at 50 kHz for 10 Watts fluorescent lamp ignition.
Key Words: Resonant Inverter, E Class Inverter, High Power Quality Output Waveform, Resonant Ballast.

some topologies used many active switch devices to generate


1 Introduction high frequency AC waveform[1,3,4]. Moreover, almost of them
yielded output pulse voltage waveform having more waveform
Electrical power generation process in Thailand, petroleum distortion. E class inverter is one of a good simple circuit im-
oil, natural gas and natural fossil are importantly used in power plementation. It uses only one active switch device operating as
plants. However, they cause the environmental problems and resonant inverter and generate sinusoidal output voltage wave-
have to be imported from oversea in lot quantities per year. In form.
the past these were not costly and had much more in many Fluorescent
countries but in the current these are very costly and decreasing Solar Arrays Battery Charger Lamp
rapidly which may be emptied in the soon future although the
need of energy consuming tends to be high. Therefore, the en-
ergy saving and renewable energy are necessary choices for
discussion in Thailand now. The solar energy is one good choice
of renewable energy and can be converted to the electrical volt- Battery Ballast
age by using solar arrays.
The photovoltaic can be used in many electrical applica-
tions and the street lighting is one of example. The street light- Fig.1 Photovoltaic powered street lighting system
ing is very important and necessary to use for protecting street This paper proposes electronic resonant ballast based on E
accidents and people life safety. Until today it was installed only class inverter operation for a small photovoltaic powered street
in the system that has the public transmission line. But for small lighting system in remote rural area in Thailand. The street
remote villages in many rural areas that have no public electrical lighting system was designed for rural area where the electrical
power transmission line, the street lighting can not be installed transmission line cannot be commonly serviced. One active
because of some area limitation such as high mountains area, switch device and resonant componants are implemented for the
and island area. proposed ballast as show in Fig.2. To verify the proposed ballast,
Presently, many power electronics technologies are applied a 10 watts resonant ballast was implemented and experimented.
to develop in many electrical applications that are powered by
photovoltaic such as battery chargers, inverters, and electronics 1 L 2 1 Lr 2

ballasts. The ballast is one important device for using in the


street lighting system as shown in Fig.1. Solar arrays generate
electrical voltage and this is chaged to battery by battery charger
Lamp

circuit. The battery cascades to the ballast for igniting a small VD


fluorescent lamp at the night time.
Q1 D1 Cr Co CL
Therefore to maintain a long operating time of the street
lighting system at the night, the ballast has to be designed as a
small feeded energy and loss-less device. The elctronics ballast Fig.2 Proposed resonant ballast
that performed by power elctronics technology was selected to
use in this system. Presently, many circuit implementations for
electronics ballast have been reported[1-4]. Mostly, they were
designed for using in AC sources utility system[3,4] and in
By comparing the waveform results in Fig.5 and 6, the
2 Control Circuit Implementation output voltage waveforms were almost same in maximum value
To control the active switch device (MOSFET) as shown in (165 V) and sinusoidal waveform.
Fig.2, the duty ratio controllable pulse signal is required.
Therefore, to avoid the complexity of control circuit implemen-
tation, the PWM integrated circuit (IC) number SG3524 was se-
lected to generated control signal. The control implementation is
shown in Fig.3. Pulse frequencies and duty ratios can be easily
varied by changing the value of resistors in the circuit.
Vcc 12 V
560 :

5.6K

220K
SG3524 3.7K
Fig.6 Experimental output voltage waveform
100K

10nF 4 Conclusions
1.5K

The resonant ballast based on E class inverter was pro-


posed. Circuit implementation of the ballast was very simple.
Fig.3 Control circuit implemented by SG3524 The ballast output voltage was oscillated as high frequency si-
nusoidal voltage waveform. The active switch device was con-
trolled by fixed duty ratio and switching frequency PWM con-
3 Circuit Verification Results troller. The control circuit was done by using a simple
well-known PWM controller IC number SG3524. To verify the
To verify the proposed ballast, the circuit simulation resonant ballast design, the circuit simulation and experimenta-
by Pspice and experimentation were applied by designing tion of 10Watts of electronic resonant ballast were applied.
to meet the following specifications: From the results, the 12 VDC from battery was generated to be
the output power Po = 10 W, the sinusoidal output 165 VAC of high frequency sinusoidal voltage waveform, low
voltage Vo(max) = 165 V at waveform frequency = 50kHz, harmonic voltage, at 50 kHz for 10 Watts fluorescent lamp igni-
the input DC voltage Vdc = 12 V, the switching frequency tion.
fs = 50 kHz. Acknowledgements
From theses specification, the power circuit parame- Authors would like to thank for well co-operation of
ters (inductors and capacitors) can be determeined as Mr.Sanya Dokpikul and Mr. Akekalak Chaluamthai who were
shown in Fig.4. undergraduate student in PECS laboratory, KMUTT.
22PH 11.2PH
1 2 1 2
References
[1] M. K. Kazimierczuk, W. Szaraniec. Electronic Ballast for
Fluorescent Lamp, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics,
12V Control
Circuit 220nF 147nF 4.7nF October 1993, Vol.8: No.4, 386-395.
[2] M. C. Cosby, Jr., R.M. Nelms, A Resonant Inverter for Elec-
10W tronic Ballast Applications, IEEE Transactions on Industrial
Electronics, August 1994, Vol.41: No.4.
Fig.4 Power circuit for proposed ballast [3] J.Ribas,J.M. Alonso,A.J. Calleja,E.L. Corominas, M. Rico-
Secades, J. Cardesín,Low-Cost Single-Stage Electronic Ballast
The switching frequency and duty ratio were fixed at 50 Based on a Self-Oscillating Resonant Inverter Integrated With a
kHz and 50% respectively. By using the proposed resonant bal- Buck–Boost PFC Circuit, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Elec-
last, the output voltage waveform for supplying to 10 Watts tronics, December 2001, Vol.48: No.6.
fluorescent lamp was generated as sinusoidal. [4] J. Marcos Alonso, A. J. Calleja, J. Ribas, E. L. Corominas,
Fig.5 shows the simulation waveform and Fig.6 shows the M.Rico-Secades,Analysis and Design of a Novel Single-Stage
experimental waveform. High-Power-Factor Electronic Ballast Based on Integrated Buck
163V
Half-Bridge Resonant Inverter, IEEE Transactions on Power
100V Electronics, March 2004, Vol.19: No.2.

0V

-100V

-178V
5.1064ms 5.1200ms 5.1400ms 5.1600ms 5.1800ms 5.2000ms
V(C6:2)
Time

Fig.5 Pspice simulation output voltage waveform

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