Research And Design On A Photovoltaic Array Simulator

The photovoltaic array plays a very important role in all the investigations of the PV grid-connected system. However, PV arrays are very expensive and very easily influenced by insolation, daytime or midnight and other environment factors, which serve as a barrier in the development of the PV grid-connected system. A photovoltaic array simulator, having the same output characteristic as that of the PV array, is proposed in the paper.The PV array simulator proposed in the paper is inexpensive and independent on environment factors, thus, may provide a stable and continuous experimental condition to the research and development of the PV grid-connected system.On the basis of study and analysis of the PV array, the topology of the main circuit is put forward. In the meanwhile, the control arithmetic is researched. The simulation software Matlab is applied to simulate the main circuit, and the result of the simulation is satisfying, which confirms the designed main circuit and the control strategy. A hardware circuit is built based on the simulation, and TMS320LF2407 is used as the control chip of the system. And then the software control program is compiled, which helps to experiment with the hardware circuit.The experimental result testifies that the designed PV array simulator has good performance, and is capable of emulating the V-I characteristic curve of the PV array. At last, the paper summarizes the system, and draws a blueprint of the simulator’s expectation.