Photovoltaic Panel Emulators, Design and Implementation Using Rapid Prototyping Technique

摘要

Photovoltaic emulators (PVE) are power electronic systems that are able to reproduce the output "Current-Voltage" characteristics of photovoltaic panels in various operating conditions. They are indispensable for the design and evaluation of the operational components of a photovoltaic energy system, such as battery chargers and Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT). Those emulators prevent the experimental testing process on a site and ensure considerable savings in time and cost. In this article, we adopt the rapid prototyping technique incorporating an acquisition board and the toolbox "Real Time Windows Target" of Matlab. For that, we propose to use direct blocs schemes in Simulink in order to simulate and control a hardware target emulating a photovoltaic panel. The experimental platform's obtained results show that the characteristics of the designed emulator output are in good agreement with those of a real photovoltaic panel, under different conditions of temperature, irradiation and load.