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How to build a hybrid solar/wind energy harvester?

High-side mosfet board: an elance experience

Introduction A few months ago – as a prototyping experiment – we decided to develop two types of high-power switching boards: one for high-side switching and another one for low-side switching. Goal was to gain some experience on different switching techniques for charge controllers. We contacted several hardware development / prototyping companies and, at the […]

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Charge controller high-side / low-side wiring diagrams – part 2

Connection scheme for low-side switching In comparison to the high-side wiring diagram we saw in part 1, the connections for low-side switching are the other way around: all ‘+’-s are connected (instead of all ‘-‘-s), and the (power) switching devices are ‘below’ the loads (instead of ‘above’). In order to better explain this diagram, we need […]

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Charge controller high-side / low-side wiring diagrams – part 1

Introduction After exploring the relay solution space (read part1, part2 and part3), we decided to actually change the boundary of the system and move the relay outside of the energy harvester. Main reason is flexibility and scalability: one could choose a more optimal relay in terms of cost and power spec depending on the (maximum) […]

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Electrical direct current switching boards

Prototype building block While working on our energy harvester design, we have identified a couple of relatively independent building blocks that could also be interesting for other people doing projects and building prototypes. One building block is the switch: In its most basic form, it closes an electrical circuit after which a load can get […]

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MOSFETS

In this article we are going to give a short overview of mosfets and more specifically power mosfets. Surfing the web, we found this great YouTube video (Developed under Teaching Innovation Project 10-170 of Universidad de Granada in Spain) covering the basics of mosfets: Definition “The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is […]

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