A Real-Time Simulator

Of A Photovoltaic Module
Linfeng Zhang
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, CT 06604

1. Introduction 2.2 Weather Conditions 4. Results and Discussion

In the development and performance test of 6

maximum power point tracker and converter, it 5

is hard to guarantee PV module output due to 4

1000W/m test
2

the solar insolation and temperature [1].

Current (A)
2
3 800W/m test
2
200W/m test
2
1000W/m calc
2 2
800W/m calc

In this poster, a real-time simulator of a PV

2
200W/m calc
1

module is developed with the following 0

functions: 0 5 10 15 20 25
Voltage (V)

o Calculate the solar position Figure 4 The comparison of the IV curves

o Obtain real-time weather conditions through between the simulator output and the theoretical
Yahoo! Weather under different irradiance levels.
o Detect and measure the external load
o Generate electric output 100
2
1000W/m test

The real-time weather condition is obtained through 80

2
800W/m test
2
200W/m test

Yahoo! Weather RSS Feed. This is implemented 60

through the LabVIEW HTTP Get function and the xml

Power (W)
file parsing. 40

20

2.3 Solar Position 0

Figure 1 The front panel of the simulator

0 5 10 15 20 25
Voltage (V)

Figure 5 The power-voltage curves under three

40 NOAA
Simulation
35
Figure 1 shows the user-friendly interface and 30 irradiance levels
the only input to the simulator is a zip code 25
Altitude ( )
0

25 20
20
18
(a) 15
20 16
10
14
5 15
12
Voltage (V)

2. Simulation Models

Current (A)
0 10
8 10 12 14 16 18 10
8
Time (hour)
6
5
4

260 0 2
NOAA
Simulation 0
240 0 100 200 300 400 500 600
220 Time (s)

Figure 2 The structure of the simulator Figure 6 The dynamic output from the simulator
200
Azimuth ( )
0

(b) 180

160

The structure includes four modules shown in 140 Figure 4 show that the simulator output is very
Figure 2 and the Solar module is the core which 120 close with the maximum voltage difference 0.4V.
interacts with the other three and the physical 100
8 10 12 14 16 18 Figure 6 shows the fast response of the simulator.
instrument, DC power source. Time (hour)

Figure 3 Comparison of the Azimuth (a) and solar

2.1 PV Module altitude (b) between the calculation and the reference
[3] on Feb. 20, 2014
Table 1 Characteristic parameters of the PV module
5. Conclusion
Irradiance Voc
(w/m2) (V)
Isc
(A)
Vmp
(V)
Imp
(A)
The simulator can be used to replace a real PV
1000 22.1 5.21 17.9 5.03
module for the development of MPPT and
converters
800
600
21
20.5
4
3
17.5
17.5
3.5
2.5
3. Experimental Setup
400 20 2 17.5 1.5 References
200 19 1 17.5 0.7 Programmable DC Load 1. Minwon Park, I.-K.Y., A Novel Real-Time
TekPower 3711A Simulation Technique of Photovoltaic Generation
Table 2 Temperature coefficient (0-500Ω) Systems Using RTDS. IEEE Transactions on
%/oC
Energy Conversion, 2004. 19(1): p. 164-169.
Voc -0.36
Programmable DC Power Source 2. Linfeng Zhang, The performance of a grid-tied
Isc 0.105
Vmpp -0.408 BK Precision 1788 microgrid with hydrogen storage and a hydrogen
Impp -0.0281 (0-32V, 0-6A) fuel cell stack, Energy Conversion and
I  I sc  A(e  1)
BV Management, 2014, 87:421-427
3. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/azel
VOC ,ambient   TSTC  Tambient   VOC ,rated LabVIEW software .html