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A solar cell without sunlight hitting it will act like a reversed diode, blocking the flow of current. This will cause a very nasty issue that can toast the cell, rendering the panel unusable.
When deploying solar panels, we use bypass diodes, often a Schottky diode, to allow the current to pass through again, avoiding damaging the solar cell.
However, the Schottky diode will drop out around 0.6V, which will hog the power generated by an entire solar cell!
We use an ideal diode, which employs a MOSFET to control the flow of current, to eliminate the crippling voltage drop.
Unfortunately, commercially available quasi-passive ideal diodes are very, very expensive, due to the high cost of the controllers' complex design.
Therefore, I designed a cheaper bypass diode circuit inspired by the active controller circuit we all know and love.
The caveat here is that a -5V power supply is required, which can be easily achieved by charge pump ICs, and they're quite cheap.
This circuit consists of 4 modules of ideal diodes, and the power cascade circuit of the top one is not connected.
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