Low-Cost Instrument for Tracing Current-Voltage Characteristics of Photovoltaic Modules

This paper presents a simple, robust and low-cost instrument for tracing currentand power-voltage characteristics of photovoltaic modules or low voltage strings using either an oscilloscope or a LabVIEW application developed for this purpose. It consists of a flexible electronic circuit, developed from a previous work, based on a fast varying load, built with a power MOSFET, which is controlled by means of a suitable gate-source voltage control signal in order to improve the tracing of currentand powervoltage characteristics on an oscilloscope. The new developments of this work include a low-cost DAQ system and an application developed in LabVIEW, which enhances the functionalities and flexibility of the current-voltage tracer. The robustness was strongly improved in view of field tests for fault diagnosis analysis. All details of the electronic circuit are shown in this paper and experimental results obtained with the new instrument are presented.

[1]  Yingying Kuai,et al.  An electronic load for testing photovoltaic panels , 2006 .

[2]  E. E. van Dyk,et al.  Assessing the reliability and degradation of photovoltaic module performance parameters , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Reliability.

[3]  A. R. Gxasheka,et al.  Monitoring current-voltage characteristics of photovoltaic modules , 2002, Conference Record of the Twenty-Ninth IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2002..

[4]  A. Cuevas,et al.  Simple Data Acquisition of the Current-Voltage and Illumination-Voltage Curves of Solar Cells1 , 2006, 2006 IEEE 4th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conference.

[5]  Dezso Sera,et al.  Low-cost, high flexibility I–V curve tracer for photovoltaic modules , 2010, 2010 12th International Conference on Optimization of Electrical and Electronic Equipment.

[6]  S. Castello,et al.  Efficiency degradation of c-silicon photovoltaic modules after 22-year continuous field exposure , 2003, 3rd World Conference onPhotovoltaic Energy Conversion, 2003. Proceedings of.

[7]  Andres Cuevas,et al.  Simple data acquisition of the current-voltage curves of solar cells , 2006 .

[8]  Faustino Chenlo,et al.  An improved electronic circuit for tracing the I-V characteristics of photovoltaic modules and strings , 2010 .

[9]  Sven Teske,et al.  Solar photovoltaic electricity empowering the world , 2011 .

[10]  E. E. van Dyk,et al.  Monitoring current-voltage characteristics and energy output of silicon photovoltaic modules , 2005 .