A measurement setup for electric bicycles

powered from renewable energy sources

Marco Caruso, Valeria Boscaino, Giovanni Cipriani, Vincenzo Di Dio, Vincenzo Ferraro, Rosario Miceli, Member
IEEE, Filippo Pellitteri, Giuseppe Ricco Galluzzo
Dipartimento di Energia, Ingegneria dell'Informazione e Modelli Matematici (DEIM)
Università degli Studi di Palermo
Palermo, Italy

Abstract—In this paper a measurement system for a pedal-
assist rickshaw is described. It has been designed and realized
with the purpose of a deep analysis of operating time, range and
general performance of the prototype vehicle. The three-wheel
velocipede under test, developed in the SDES laboratory of the
University of Palermo, is equipped with two battery packs, and a
photovoltaic panel which is used to recharge one of the packs at a
time. To further improve the autonomy of this mean, a fuel cell
will be added as a power source, whose consequent improvement
in performance could be easily investigated by the presented
measurement setup. An Arduino board has been employed to
receive and store all collected data into a microSD card, allowing
a convenient accessibility of all gathered information.
Keywords—electric power assist vehicle; measurement system;
photovoltaic; fuel cell; battery pack
I. INTRODUCTION
Global energy needs are more and more demanding,
mainly originated by the increasing difficulty in oil provision.
While one of the keys for success is energy reduction by
means of an efficient energy use, finding new alternatives to
traditional and established energy sources is a major goal in
order to address this problem. The investigation of energy-
efficient transport vehicles is therefore pursued, as well, in
order to contribute to the destination of a sustainable
development [1].
An advantageous solution is the evolution of means of
transport powered by electric energy obtained from renewable
sources, e.g. photovoltaic panels [2], permitting the reduction
of carbon dioxide emissions, at the same time. Similarly, a
viable compromise is the employ of hybrid vehicles –
energized by both electricity and fuel or hydrogen [3-5] –
which succeed in avoiding the main disadvantages of vehicles
powered exclusively by alternative energies, e.g., the reduced
operating range.
At the same time, electric bicycles with pedal-assist
(pedelecs) are spreading more and more. They combine the
convenience of a zero-emission mean of transport with low-
cost per kilometer, and the sensation of naturalness of a low-
speed mean, with limited dimensions and need for
maintenance.
For this reason, vehicles of this kind are being employed
for touristic purposes, e.g. pedal-assist rickshaws [6,7], where
tourists can get the ease of some room to stay comfortably
seated.
A specific prototype of pedal-assist vehicle, named
"ecolapa" (Fig. 1) [8-10], has been designed and realized by a
group of engineers of the University of Palermo, and is
currently at disposal of the SDES (Sustainable Development
Energy Saving) laboratory. It is equipped, alongside with two
independent battery packs, selectable alternatively, with a
photovoltaic panel installed over the roof, and a fuel cell will
be hosted under the seats.
In this paper, the design and development of a
measurement system are described, aimed to the acquisition of
static and on the march data from this pedal-assist electric
velocipede, so as to permit the collection of useful information
for the evaluation of the performance of the vehicle and its
operating range, and for future optimizations and further
improvements, specifically for the insertion of an additional
fuel cell power source.
II. FEATURES OF THE TRICYCLE UNDER TEST
The ecolapa prototype can be considered a pedal-assist
velocipede since it is a three-wheel vehicle adopting a
brushless DC motor whose nominal power is 250 W and
complies with other prescriptions of the laws of the road [11-
13]. It employs a Pedal Assist System (PAS) providing
information about presence or absence of driver's thrust on
pedals, and respects the restrictions about dimensions, being
298 cm long, 128 cm wide, 156 cm high. It can host two
passengers in addition to the driver, and it can take advantage
of the motor thrust up to the speed of 25 km/h, above which it
Fig. 1. Picture of the ecolapa prototype

Fig. 2. PV management and charging system
scheme
Fig. 3. PV managing and charging system
circuit located on board
is disabled from the controller, in order to obey to law rules.
Precisely, the ecolapa is equipped with a Crystalyte 4011
brushless DC motor, controlled by a PWM signal generated by
the CY8C3866 chip by Cypress. Only if the PAS perceives
pedals' movement, a control unit can activate the motor
supplying with the requested current. This is interrupted either
when the threshold speed is reached or when brakes are
activated by levers, which includes appropriately designed
sensors.
Under the back seats is placed a compartment where two
battery packs are stored, each formed by three flooded lead-
acid Fiamm FG21803 12 V / 18 Ah batteries connected in
series. Which battery pack is connected to the control unit is
chosen by an A/B/null selector.
The vehicle is equipped with one Conergy E-215P
photovoltaic module [14], able to provide a maximum power
of 215 Wp. This is connected with three Western WRM-15
charge regulators [15] (Figs. 2-3), in order to achieve the
maximum power point tracking (MPPT). Each regulator is
connected with one of the three disconnected batteries (i.e.,
the three-battery pack which is not selected for powering the
electric motor), by a purposely designed switching circuit [7],
which changes the connection topology of the pack, from a
series one to a topology providing three independent recharge
subcircuits.
Furthermore, the system will integrate a Proton Exchange
Membrane (PEM) fuel cell to supply the motor by means of
on board hydrogen reserve. The electric motor will be
powered by battery packs, the fuel cell and the photovoltaic
module in a multi-source configuration. The proposed setup
would allow simultaneous use of both renewable sources,
meeting all power load requirements [16].
III. THE MEASUREMENT SYSTEM
Before setting the measurement system up, a few basic
preliminary steps were needed, that is the identification of the
quantities of interest, the range of values where every one of
these can vary, and the accuracy level requested to achieve
desired goals.
Selected quantities have been identified with relationship
to system sub-blocks: about the batteries, every pack's voltage
is to be measured, together with the current delivered to the
motor or the current that batteries absorb from the
photovoltaic charge regulators. Further, the voltage of the PV
panel must be added, and its related temperature, which is to
be compared with ambient temperature.
With respect to the vehicle, it has been chosen to keep
track of instantaneous speed of the velocipede, and its
coordinates with a GPS receiver. Gathering all of these
collected information, we can evaluate the response of the
ecolapa to load variations corresponding to the sections of
road with higher slope, and the ability of the energy sources to
supply the needed power.
An Arduino Mega 2560 board [17] has been individuated
for the acquisition and collection of data. It includes an
ATmega 2560 microcontroller and is equipped with 54
input/output digital pins and 16 input analog pins. It is
programmed through a computer by means of a USB
connection. In order to provide power to Arduino, it has been
realized a simple supply circuit based on a linear regulator,
able to guarantee a stable fixed 8 V voltage. Using a higher
voltage, the power dissipated on the linear regulator located
inside the Arduino board would increase, and for this reason it
has been preferred not to power it with the 12 V voltage
already available from the batteries. This double-regulation
choice causes an additional conversion loss which proves
irrelevant if compared with powers at stake in the rest of the
system. Furthermore, it permits to obtain a more stable supply
voltage, which is critical since it is employed as a reference
voltage inside Arduino. Data are saved into a microSD 1 GB
card, inserted in an Ethernet Shield mounted on Arduino pin
headers, which acts as a hardware extension board. The
recording is triggered at intervals of one second, when enabled
through a dedicated slide switch.
Among the voltage measurements, those related to battery
packs and controller supply are directly referred to the
common ground, while the other ones (e.g., photovoltaic panel
output voltage) required a differential measure. In order to
reduce the noise generated from the motor operation,
instrumentation amplifiers have been chosen for every voltage
 between an impulse and the next one, a datum is extracted,
which is then processed via software to remove spurious
impulses or eventual missing identifications. The developed
code has been structured such as not to alter the temporal
periodicity of data recording, despite the unpredictability of
pulses arrival from the reed switch. Last, all acquired data is
also visualized on a 20-character 4-line LCD display, selecting
which quantity has to be shown by means of a tactile
pushbutton.
Nevertheless, in the log file a coordinate pair is associated
to every data set, received by virtue of an A2035H Maestro
GPS module. It is also employed to get the actual date and
time, saved into the microSD card, too. The GPS receiver has
not been employed for vehicle's speed estimation because this
information is affected by excessive fluctuations when
evaluated from simple coordinate variations.
IV. THE PCB BOARD
A double-sided PCB board has been designed and realized
to gather all electronic devices described in previous section
(Fig. 4). CadSoft EAGLE has been adopted for both the
schematic and the layout of the designed circuit, by virtue of
its compatibility with LPKF ProtoMat S42 circuit board
plotter, available in the laboratory. It is to be noticed that some
of the components were not available in the library, and have
thus been purposely designed for this project.
First of all, a constant 8 V power supply has been
produced through a linear regulator, whose input is connected
Fig. 4. PCB board schematic

measure. These amplifiers have been designed to provide a

nominal voltage around 2.5 V, thus keeping it at the center of
the 0-5 V range of acceptable voltages for Arduino analog
input pins. Simple low-pass filters have been included to
reduce measurement errors, sized such as to cut noise whose
frequency is approximately above 100 Hz.
For the measurement of currents flowing from
photovoltaic panel or batteries, sensing resistors of 20
mΩ ц1% have been selected, capable of dissipating a
maximum power of 5 W. At higher estimated current (i.e., 10
A), dissipated power is 3 W and power derating is about 10%
at the temperature of 100 °C. An instrumentation amplifier
analogous to the ones adopted for differential voltage
measurements has been applied to every sensing resistor.
Ambient temperature and photovoltaic module temperature
remain both limited under 100 °C, and – for preset goals of
built system – an accuracy of 0.5-1 °C is sufficient. For this
reason, a simple circuit has been adopted, based on a high-
precision 10 kΩ thermistor at the reference temperature, able
to provide Arduino with a voltage ranging from 1.2 V to 4.7
V, when the temperature is between 0 °C and 100 °C.
The speed of the vehicle has been measured by means of a
reed switch, which closes the contact once every wheel turn.
The signal is thus sent in an asynchronous way, and therefore
received by Arduino as an interrupt, unlike all other signals
which are instead periodically read, in a synchronous way.
With a few simple calculations, from the time elapsed
Fig. 5. PCB board layout
 Fig. 6. Prototype board
to a service 12V battery, already used in the velocipede for
powering lights, turn signals and horn. This component needs
to feed the whole measurement system, including Arduino, the
Ethernet shield, the LCD display and the GPS. Since the
overall current the regulator needs to provide is about 0.5 A, a
heat sink has been placed on the board, as visible in the layout
(to the right in Fig. 5) in correspondence to the red "reverse-C
shaped" area.
The vehicle is equipped with two 36 V battery packs,
capable of powering the electric motor through the control
unit. Each of these two voltages is measured reducing the
amplitude with a voltage divider, and extracting this value by
means of a unity gain buffer made from an operational
amplifier. With this configuration, input impedance of
Arduino's pins doesn't affect the measure. A capacitor in
parallel with the grounded resistor helps to stabilize this
voltage which is assumed to be slowly varying, or constant
during most of the service time.
Since this task doesn't involve high frequency operation,
the main requirement for the op-amp is a low offset voltage
and the support for an 8 V single supply. A low-power LM324
proved to meet these specifics, including four op-amps inside
a single chip. More crucial is the role of resistors, whose value
has been chosen to be 1% precise, while the capacitor's value
is clearly not critical at all, and a regular 20% tolerance is
definitely acceptable.
The mounted photovoltaic panel produces a voltage
ranging approximately from 28.27 V (at maximum power) to
36.37 V (at open circuit), which is delivered to three charge
regulators, each producing a 12 V voltage. Since one of the
two battery packs is under charge at a time, while the other
one is connected to the electric motor, then the measure of all
single regulators voltages provides all additional information
needed about the batteries voltages. These WRM-15 output
voltages are collected using the same circuit described above,
where a different resistor ratio is employed.
In order to determine the photovoltaic voltage, a diffe-
rential measure is needed instead, since the negative pole
cannot be connected to ground without creating a short circuit
between anode and cathode of the block diode included inside
Fig. 7. Measurement system mounted on Arduino
the Western WRM-15 regulators, which has the function to
avoid a current flowing from the batteries to the panel during
the nighttime [15]. To ensure a high-precision evaluation, an
integrated single-supply instrumentation amplifier has been
selected, whose inputs have been connected to an ungrounded
voltage divider, and the gain has been set to its minimum
value, i.e., 5.
A differential configuration has been employed for current
measurements, too. There are five currents of interest in this
system. The first one is the current from the photovoltaic
panel, which nominally cannot exceed 8.21 A. It has been
estimated lower than a maximum value of 10 A, as a safety
limit. This output current is split into three parts, because of
three equivalent paths to the respective charge regulators, and
increased of a factor up to three, because of the ratio between
the input and output voltages of the regulators. Therefore,
other three 10 A currents have been considered.
The last one is the current absorbed by the Crystalyte
motor, which can reach 15 A when under a heavy load.
Considering a safety margin, a maximum of 20 A has been
taken into account.
All of these current measurements are performed by means
of a sensing resistor, whose voltage drop is transferred to input
pins of an AD8223 in-amp. In this case, a 22.2 gain has been
employed, to amplify the small drop across 20mΩ resistors
and make it easily manageable by Arduino. To ensure
adequate power dissipation even in case of the higher current,
two sensing resistors are placed in parallel. In the layout, trace
widths have been enlarged accordingly, considering at least
190 mils and 490 mils for 10 A and 20 A currents,
respectively.
The voltage stability of every in-amp device is critical, and
is strongly influenced by the fluctuations in power source. To
ensure a constant supply, every AD8223 chip features two
capacitors (10ʅF and 100nF) close to the power pins of the
device. However, in the whole PCB board most signals are
almost steady, except for the TX/RX couple from/to the GPS
module. Both the two 103-AT high-precision NTC thermistors
adopted for ambient and photovoltaic panel temperature
measurement have been employed with their recommended
 Fig. 8. Route travelled for the measurement test
standard configuration, but followed by an op-amp voltage
buffer for each one, to guarantee that the output reading
doesn't load the sensor. The resistive change with temperature
is not linear, but is provided a lookup table in the datasheet.
From this information, a slight extension of the Steinhart–Hart
equation has been adopted:
1 once, but not all data within a single frame. Therefore, a tactile
T= – 273.15 (1a)
A + B·f – C·f 2 + D·f 3
VCC
f = Loge R  – 1 (1b)
VTH
where T is the obtained temperature in °C, VCC = 8 V is the
voltage supply, VTH is the voltage drop across the resistor
(whose value is R) selected for the voltage divider. A, B, C, D
constants have been determined analytically from the data at
four reference temperatures (0 °C, 25 °C, 50 °C, 75 °C). The
resulting relation is accurate in the -50 °C ÷ 100 °C range
within 0.1 °C. These two equations have been programmed
inside the Arduino sketch, and proved to create no slowdown
at all.
The reed switch used to calculate the speed of the ecolapa
is applied in proximity of the front wheel, where a strong
magnet determines the closing of the contact every wheel turn.
It is encapsulated in a glass shell which turned out to be solid
enough to resist to normal use shocks.
On the board three on/off switches have been included.
The first one is used to power the whole circuit, since it
connects/disconnects the 12V service battery to the input of
the linear regulator, letting a green led light up. Another
switch manages the recording on the microSD card, and drives
the lighting of a red led. A different kind of task is assigned to
last switch, which is used to transfer to Arduino information
about which battery pack is currently selected. This is needed
to store the correct information in the log data, permitting to
couple it with the specific battery pack.
The GPS module included is powered at 3.3 V, provided
by a specific linear regulator inside Arduino. Its main role is to
track the coordinates of the ecolapa while running on the road,
Fig. 9. Torque vs wheel speed (rounds per minute)
permitting to couple instantaneous position with collected
data. E.g., it is possible to match information about power
peaks with high slope locations.
All above described information can be also shown on an
LCD display. With its four lines, each 20 characters long, it
permits to present to the user more than just one measure at
pushbutton has been mounted on the main board, allowing to
cycle among different subsequent frames. The first screen
illustrates the values of voltages and currents related to
photovoltaic panel and electric motor. Next one shows
voltages and currents provided by the three charge regulators.
Then a screen exhibits ambient and PV panel temperatures,
together with the speed of the velocipede and the traveled
distance. Following frame is dedicated to latitude and
longitude coordinates of GPS location. Last screen includes
two lines with current date and time, received from the GPS
signal too, and two lines describing which battery pack is
currently selected and if recording mode is on or off. In a
future (non-prototypal) system the pushbutton will be located
separately from the board, right next to the display.
The LCD display, compatible with the Hitachi HD44780
driver, is connected to Arduino in 4-bit mode, requiring 6 pins
from Arduino and two for the 5 V supply. For contrast
regulation, after a few tests, a fixed voltage divider has been
adopted. Connection with Arduino Mega 2560 is obtained
through stackable header pins soldered on the board. The
exact Arduino Mega layout has been reproduced in CadSoft
EAGLE, but only effectively used pins have been considered
while placing all other components, allowing no waste of
space.
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The prototype board (Figs. 6-7) was installed on the
ecolapa, providing live measurements available from the back
seats. A test path has been designed and traveled to emulate a
complete tourist tour. In Fig. 8 all intended stops are
represented, as expected for the touristic use of the vehicle in
the city of Palermo. The full route is 18 km long and most of it
has been covered taking advantage of the charge of one
battery pack, which could cover 16.6 km in 79 minutes. Other
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