High Efficiency Electric Power Manager for Man-Portable Photovoltaic Systems

Energy is the backbone of modern warfighters in today"s environment. Solders currently carry as much as 15-20 pounds of batteries. Effective management of these batteries and an efficient means of charging these batteries is extremely important. Currently Lithium-Ion batteries such as the BB-2950 are charged by photovoltaic cells which results in significant energy loss due to poor energy management and limitations on charging configurations. A cost-effective, lightweight low power manager is needed to couple low power photovoltaic energy to several lithium-Ion batteries in a charging system that makes full use of all available power from the photo-voltaic source and has minimal power loss throughout the charging system. Currently field chargers for the BB-2590 battery can charge only one battery at a time and are optimized for 90 or 150 watts of power transfer. To address the need for charging multiple batteries from one power source requires the converters to be networked. SeaLandAire intends to address this challenge by developing a High Efficiency Electric Power Manager (HEEPM) for Man-Portable Photovoltaic Systems that can charge more than one battery at a time in a very small, lightweight and cost effective package.