The current paper presents an experimental validation of photovoltaic (PV) source emulation using a real-time dSpace controller. The PV source emulator is a nonlinear power electronic device used to provide in real-time the electrical behavior of PV panels by tracking the PV current–voltage (I–V) characteristic. It aims to deliver nearly the same current and voltage as an actual PV module without depending on atmospheric conditions. This innovative tool is able to aid researchers in PV systems to perform their tests and measurements at the desired weather parameters without time, space and cost constraints. The proposed PV emulator is based on a simple and efficient adaptive state feedback control that ensures good accuracy and high dynamic response compared to the existing commercial PV emulators based on the programmable power supply, which improves significantly the static and dynamic performances of existing PV emulators.

In the last decades, researchers and scientists have been trending towards photovoltaic (PV) solar energy research as one of the noteworthy renewable energies. As a matter of fact, the need for a laboratory system devoted to performing measurements and experimentation on PV systems is being increased. The PV array emulator is designed to accomplish this task by reproducing accurately the electrical behavior of real PV sources. The present paper proposes thus a new control and design of PV array emulators. It is based essentially on a hybrid Damping Injection controller. The proposed control strategy circumvents obviously the existing PV emulator's limitations in terms of accuracy, speed and partial shading emulation. Several results are given and discussed to show the efficiency of the proposed system to emulate PV modules and different PV array configurations under uniform solar irradiance and partial shading conditions.

This work proposes a new design and development of photovoltaic (PV) array emulator, which is highly requested in laboratories and manufacturers where the need of testing the proper functioning of PV systems and devices has increased, this solar emulator can replicate faithfully the PV characteristics without using real PV modules. The new developed system is based on a simplified hybrid control strategy of referencing in order to ensure high accuracy and speed compared to many existing PV emulators that suffer from poor dynamic response and inaccuracy in some particular zones of the PV current-voltage characteristic. This novel control strategy is endowed with a nonlinear Lyapunov based controller so that the closed-loop of the overall system remains asymptotically stable for any operating point and mode transition of the DC-DC buck converter regardless of the load variation and weather parameters change. Simulations results using SimPower Matlab Simulink software are given and well-analyzed so as to highlight the performances of the proposed system and its improvement compared to the existing solutions.

This paper presents the design and development of a photovoltaic (PV) source emulator able to behave similarly as an actual PV module irrespective of environmental conditions change, it consists basically of a switch mode power supply (SMPS) controlled by a backstepping technique with a control strategy of referencing. The backstepping strategy is used to guaranty more accuracy and stability of the system and ensure a high bandwidth in order to track faithfully the Current-Voltage (I-V) characteristic of a desired PV module. Simulation results are given and discussed so as to validate the functioning of the proposed PV emulator as well as evaluate the performances of the suggested control technique in terms of accuracy, speed, and robustness against load and weather parameters variation.