Abstract
A ceaseless supply of electricity is essential for all developmental sectors and even more important nowadays, as the globe evolves through a call for artificially intelligent systems in the fourth industrial revolution. Power interruptions lead to unpleasant human situations as well as great losses within all health, education, and industrial facilities requiring constant electricity. For this reason, we propose the design of an automatic transfer switch (ATS) for power transfer applications to maximize uptime. The ATS ensures the transfer of power between two power sources, hydroelectric and solar, during blackouts or power failures. The design is principally based on an Arduino Mega 2560, triacs, LEDs, as well as an LCD, SD card, Bluetooth, and GSM modules. The Arduino is powerful enough to support all the ATS modules and sustain the combined system processes required for the ATS’s automatic operation. Triacs, which are semiconductor switching devices, were utilized for high-speed switching between the two power supplies. The LEDs and LCD played a signalization role, indicating the state of the ATS at all times. Also, the SD card stores the system’s generated data whilst the Bluetooth modules ensure wireless connectivity between the ATS and a mobile device. The GSM module is for short messages (SMS). The results prove the functioning of the designed ATS, which ensures the transfer of power between two power sources with switching speeds less than 2.58 msec during blackouts or power failures. Furthermore, the ATS is a reliable, fast, and automatic system capable of protecting its internal components from surges. The proposed ATS is validated based on simulations, and the results show that the proposed ATS is promising.