Photovoltaic Emulator for Grid-connected Quasi-Z-Sorce Inverter

The performance of PV panel is very much dependent on the amount of sun light as well as the temperature of the surrounding environment which normally hard to be predicted. The use of PV emulator in the investigation of solar inverter especially at a lab scale platform helps to mitigate the inconsistency factors due to this uncontrollable variation. This work discussed on the design and development of a PV emulator for the grid-connected quasi-Z-source inverter which has different topology and control method compared to the conventional voltage source inverter. The I-V characteristics of the PV panel is modelled from the commercially available product and through circuit analysis the relation between capacitor voltage control and the PV terminal voltage is established, thus realizing the MPPT operation. Results from both simulation and experimental verification demonstrated that the PV emulator successfully able to produce power for the inverter according to the requirement.