A Novel Approach to Photovoltaic Array Simulation

The system developed in this book is aimed at providing the builders of a PV plant with a means of testing their designed plant with the actual planned load, and a small sample of the actual planned PV cells, without having to actually build the entire PV field. Such system will allow better confidence in the design, before actually committing large amounts of money to the project. The suggested PV emulator is unique in its ability to simulate a PV source with a curve identical to that of a supplied sample cell, with amplification of the current and voltage at each point of the curve, by known factors. The amplification is done in "real-Time", accounting for timely changes in the cells' curve. Simulation of an MPPT controller is also included. The presented implementation is scalable, and may be adapted to much higher maximal voltage or current. The convergence behavior of the iterative process is studied and analyzed, revealing interesting phenomena in terms of convergence. The phenomena were analyzed, and the conditions resulting in stable behavior were established.

Autorentext

The author is an M.Sc. graduate from the faculty of engineering at the Tel Aviv University. During his graduate studies, Moshe studied power processing and renewable energy technologies. Moshe lives in Israel and works for a local electronics company.