Direct Parallel and Hybrid Power Control Scheme of a Low-Power PV and Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Module

This paper presents a novel direct parallel power control scheme with independent current paths for the proposed hybrid energy-harvesting system that consists of a low-power photovoltaic panel, a piezoelectric harvesting module, and an energy storage system. A battery is connected to store the generated power from the two renewable power sources to provide a continuous power supply for the users. The designed power converter controls both battery state and power supply without any power conditioning system. To achieve this, a low-power DC–DC converter with battery charging function and control algorithm is designed for the hybrid power source. Therefore, in the proposed system, no additional battery charge controller is required. To control the battery, however, an additional current sensor to detect the battery power is simply added to each DC–DC converter. In the proposed power control scheme and controller, each power input, output, and the combined power flow are connected with neither communication protocols nor additional controller. Moreover, the converters can adjust the supplied power for parallel power-sharing. For maximum output current protection in each converter and constant current control for the battery, a hybrid power connection and its related current path are also proposed in this paper. The effectiveness of the proposed hybrid power system and the direct parallel power control scheme was verified through experiments.