Design and construction of smart three-way change over switch and microcontroller-based pure sine wave inverter with remote monitoring solution

Abstract

Intermittent power outages have rendered most developing countries' national grids unreliable. Consumers have installed alternative energy sources such as solar panels and wind turbines to combat this issue. Because of their nature, the output of these power sources must be converted to match the national grid's output. Additionally, consumers must be able to switch between these power sources when required quickly. Many inverter solutions have been developed and are readily available in the market. However, most affordable inverters produce a square wave, which is unsuitable for sensitive electronics; sine-wave inverters, on the other hand, are perfect for all appliances but are more expensive than square wave inverters. Furthermore, many switching solutions are available in the market to allow consumers to switch between power sources manually or automatically. These, however, can only switch between two power sources. This project has designed and developed a microcontroller-based pure sine wave inverter equipped with remote monitoring capabilities and a three-way intelligent changeover switch. The inverter converts 12V DC to a single-phase 230V AC at 50Hz pure sine wave. The three-way changeover utilizes a microcontroller to switch the power supply among three input power sources.