Current Concepts in Engineering Research and Technology Vol. 4

Corrosion of buried and submerged metallic structures creates substantial safety and economic concerns, particularly where conventional cathodic-protection power supplies are difficult to maintain. This study develops and simulates a solar-driven buck–boost converter for cathodic protection by integrating maximum power point tracking (MPPT), pulse-width modulation (PWM), and proportional–integral (PI) closed-loop control. The converter is intended to regulate the variable DC output of a photovoltaic source and provide the required electrical output under constant and changing input-voltage conditions. A Raspberry Pi-based controller provides feedback control, while the converter operates in both buck and boost modes. The proposed system was evaluated in Proteus Design Suite under the operating cases described in the manuscript. In buck operation, a 48 V DC input was reduced to 24 V DC, whereas in boost operation, a 12 V DC input was increased to approximately 24 V DC. Variable-input operation was also examined to assess the response of the PI-controlled PWM scheme. The simulated waveforms indicate stable DC regulation with low output ripple, and the reported settling-time parameters were 1.02 ms initially and 0.88 ms for the final settling response. Overall, the simulation results support the feasibility of the proposed solar-driven converter as a regulated power-conditioning approach for cathodic protection applications, while practical performance still requires hardware and field validation.