Photovoltaic emulator

Abstract

This work is concerned with the design and implementation of photovoltaic source emulator, which is a power converter whose output voltage and current are controllable so that to reproduce the electrical behavior of a photovoltaic panel. This is achieved through a simulation environment based on a Matlab algorithm that receives the photovoltaic panel parameters, the applied irradiance and temperature, and then calculates the corresponding I-V curve and operating point. These are transferred to the hardware through a microcontroller. Finally the hardware generates the desired Voltage and current, which emulate the output of the real PV panel.