Model-Based Optimization of a Solar-Powered Car at Lightyear
“The way I see MATLAB is really as the Swiss Army knife for engineers—you name it and MATLAB will do it.”
Key Outcomes
- Automated DMPPT for any given car body
- Quickly found sweet spot of group size versus converter loss
- Improved performance for typically curved cars by up to 18 percentage points
Lightyear One is a five-seat electric car charged by the sun, eliminating the need for a charging infrastructure. So far, electrically driven cars have required essentially flat roofs in order to maximize combined cell efficiency. This requirement limits design space for aerodynamic improvements and for attractive bodywork design.
Lightyear optimized the energy flow from the solar panel and its accompanying electronics to the vehicle. Part of the solution is distributed maximum power point tracking (DMPPT) by partitioning solar cells into groups and inserting balancing converters to equalize the differences in power generation. Using MATLAB® and Simulink® they developed a Solar Simulator Model allowing for automated DMPPT on any given vehicle body. It places cells on the body model, assigns cells to groups, uses weather and solar projection data to derive IV curves, and finally optimizes group efficiency and converter loss.
