PV array emulator for testing commercial PV inverters

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the design and construction of a photovoltaic array emulator for high power applications in order to analyze and evaluate all kind of commercial photovoltaic inverters. To validate the proposed photovoltaic emulator experimentally, a rapid prototyping tool based on xPC Target of Matlab/Simulink has been used, providing a real-time testing environment. The proposed emulator has been used to test the performance and maximum power point tracking algorithm efficiency of a commercial photovoltaic inverter by programming the desired conditions of temperature and irradiance.