The Smart-Battery Project, carried out in partnership with Petrobras, aims to improve the performance and efficiency in photovoltaic generation systems. As a country of continental dimensions with predominantly tropical climate, Brazil has great potential for the conversion of light and heat from the Sun into electric energy. Although solar energy is consolidated in the

Brazilian energy matrix, it still corresponds to only one small percentage of the total produced energy in the whole country. The installation of generation systems in electricity distribution networks, also known as distributed generation, has increased considerably in recent years. This phenomenon is justified by government stimulus and greater interest in the diversification of the electric matrix of different countries. The applications of batteries linked to photovoltaic solar generation imply their association with large banks in order to achieve the necessary power and energy levels. The series and parallel association of batteries leads to several difficulties as load equalization, maintenance and technological updating. The proposed Smart Battery technology is a promising solution to the mentioned problems.

The Smart Battery project, developed in partnership with Petrobras, the Brazilian oil and gas company,  aims to optimize the performance and financial profit of photovoltaic battery generation systems. The focus of the researchers work from the Department of Electrical Engineering of the School of Engineering of UFMG is in the development of an energy manager to store energy produced during periods of low energy consumption as well as the generation during a high cost of consumption, reducing the time of payback of photovoltaic systems with battery.