The paper concerns simulation of photovoltaic systems. First, the characteristics of a real photovoltaic module, based on real life measurements, are presented. The peculiar behavior that is due to partial shading and bypass diodes is pointed out. Then a PSpice computer model is outlined, and the computer simulations serve to understand the observed behavior. On this background, the paper presents a simple hardware-based photovoltaic simulator that is able to qualitatively behave like a real photovoltaic module. Novel developments on the signal side are introduced: a modification of the signal side load compared to previous systems is presented, but more importantly, a signal side circuit that can be controlled from a computer to emulate all kinds of irradiance conditions, including partial shading, is also devised and proven to work. Experiments show that the proof-of-concept prototypes function as expected, although there is certainly room for improvements in further work. Such simulators could, and probably should, be used for testing of power electronics based interfaces to photovoltaic systems, as they can provide repeatable laboratory conditions.
[1]
Santiago Silvestre,et al.
Modelling Photovoltaic Systems Using PSpice®: Castaner/Modelling Photovoltaic Systems Using PSpice
,
2006
.
[2]
H. Nagayoshi,et al.
Partial shading effect emulation using multi small scale module simulator units
,
2005,
Conference Record of the Thirty-first IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2005..
[3]
Santiago Silvestre,et al.
Modelling photovoltaic system using PSpice
,
2002
.
[4]
A. Luque,et al.
Handbook of Photovoltaic Science and Engineering: Luque/Photovoltaic Science and Engineering
,
2005
.
[5]
Hiroshi Nagayoshi,et al.
I–V curve simulation by multi-module simulator using I–V magnifier circuit
,
2004
.
[7]
Minwon Park,et al.
A novel real-time simulation technique of photovoltaic generation systems using RTDS
,
2004,
IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion.
[8]
David Infield,et al.
Design and construction of a modular electronic photovoltaic simulator
,
2000
.