I'm looking to design a dual battery system that's powered by solar panels to be used on a quadcopter drone. The idea is to have two lipo batteries, and use one of them to power the flight of the quadcopter while the other battery is being charged by the solar panel. When the battery powering the drone runs out, the other battery (the one being charged by solar) kicks in and the one that was previously used to power the drone starts to get charged by the solar panel. The idea is to have some sort of back-and-forth between the batteries and have the battery that's not being used to power the drone be recharged by solar panels to extend the flight time of the drone. How would I go about this? What components do I need? Some links or schematics would be helpful!
What size, what capacity would the solar panel have? Between thumbs, the power needed by the craft will be more than the panels provide.
Build the drone, fly it and find out how much power it uses. Then read datasheets for the solar panel and compare.
Double batteries also makes the drone use more power. Better would be a charging controller that handles charging and discharging at the same time.
That is extremely difficult. You will need to get a solar cell(s) that can be mounted on the craft and light enough for it to lift them. There is then the batteries, they need to have a high capacity but light and capable of being rapidly recharged. I would spend some time on the preliminary engineering and determine what you need to carry your load and from that how much power you need. The battery must last long enough for the other one to charge. It will take several passes to get a final answer. Have fun!
This idea of charging one battery at a time comes up here every now and then, but I don't think anyone has found a reasonable way to do it. Also, it isn't really necessary. You just need a circuit that lets the panels provide as much load current as they can, and if they have capacity left over, that can be used to charge the batteries.
But a more basic question is whether adding panels to a quadcopter will actually shorten battery life. In other words, can the panels produce enough current to offset the additional motor current needed to lift them. I suspect they will not.
Hello, thank you for your answer. The specifics of the powers are TBD, but my main concern is figuring out if switching between batteries mid-flight and charging the battery that's not being used is doable. My background in electrical engineering and circuits is very weak so I'm asking about what components and what type of components could be used to achieve this. Thank you
Hello, thank you for your answer. I know the task is very difficult. Besides power calculations, can you provide some guidance on how these two functionalities: 1. Switching between batteries and 2. Charging the battery not being used with solar could be implemented into a single circuit? I'm looking for help with components and maybe specific commercially availble circuits or pcbs, as I'm focusing on the wiring aspects and coming up with a feasible circuit. then optimize to meet requirements of drone.
Thanks for the insight. The idea is to do this ping-pong between batteries where one is used to power the drone and the other gets charged with solar. Any ideas on what components could be used?
Unfortunately, that is the most important conceptual part of the project. See post #5.
If the drone can't carry a panel large enough to make a difference, you are just wasting your time thinking about irrelevant details.
Hint: to get started, look up or measure out how many watts the motors consume, and then look up the size of a solar panel that provides that many watts.
@antongab
I know of an EV with a 1500W BLDC, 16Ah battery and a 100W solar collector through an MPPT. The EV traveled at 50kph for ninety minutes. The battery could be charged with the solar collector in eight hours of direct sun. The EV weight without a passenger or battery was 90kg.
If You still want to go on, I suggest changing from drone to a car. Check how long time it's moving and how long time it's sitting idle. Switching batteries without having the controller bang out is not a beginners task.
Most quadcopters are designed to hoist a battery and fly for some time.
Leaving aside the solar panels, placing a second battery on the same quadcopter will have implications:
Lower flight time
Unsatisfactory flight performance
Can't even get off the ground
The area of solar panels compared to the current draw of a quadcopter means X minutes of sunlight would power the quadcopter for Y minutes. Imma predict that X is very greater than Y, that it to say almost pointless.
And I suggest changing to something that does not take the massive wattage of keeping a quadcopter in the air.
Maybe you can prove something with a little motor that turns a tiny fan blades.
Maybe you could use a lighter-than-air vehicle.
You might get somewhere with a state-of-the-art fixed wing high efficiency vehicle.
Yes, certainly for a hobby drone, but the OP hasn't yet discovered that.
In real life, check out the solar panel configuration (the wings) on the proposed solar powered statospheric drone by Airbus, which they hope will stay aloft for months.
Exactly....power usage versus charge rate and extra flight loads would make it impractical.
Also design problem of "where does one stick the panels"............
