According to the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) battery chargers for our handheld devices and laptops are some of the biggest wasters of residential power. Even when they aren’t charging the device, they are consuming energy like a dripping faucet. Solar energy systems can have a dramatic affect at reducing that drain on this precious and increasingly expensive resources and a group of design and system engineers at Texas Instruments took a look at how to deal with it over at Electronic Products.
Written by Karthik Kadirvel, Umar Lyles and John Carpenter, the article, some of the looks at small-scale solar panels as high-output impedance power sources contrasting them to a wall-adapters or a USB sources. They take into account maximum power point tracking (MPPT), reverse leakage protection, techniques for charge termination, and preventing solar-panel collapse.
Read the full article at Electronic Products.