Design and Implementation of Low-Cost Solar Photovoltaic Emulator Utilizing Arduino Controller and DC–DC Buck Converter Topology

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This chapter presents the design and modeling of photovoltaic (PV) emulator using DC–DC buck converter in MATLAB/Simulink and its hardware implementation utilizing Arduino controller. PV emulator is a DC power supply source that mimics the characteristics of a solar panel output. This can be achieved by integrating a PV panel model into its feedback control system. The PV emulator consists of a current-controlled DC–DC buck converter, PV panel model and PI controller. The design of the current-controlled DC–DC buck converter is discussed. The PV panel model is developed based on the first principle derived from the single-diode equivalent circuit. This model allows the user to set the parameters to emulate any solar panel. The PV panel model receives the voltage and current from the buck converter output as feedback to compute the reference current. The selection of components such as PV emulator controller model for Arduino deployment is discussed. In the result and discussion section, a 20 W PV panel model is used as a reference. PV emulator simulation model is used to evaluate how PI controller coefficients affect the performance of the PV emulator. Mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) is used as a performance indicator on the PV characteristic curve outputs. Lastly, the PV emulator hardware prototype is used to validate the PV emulator simulation result. The performance of the PV emulator hardware achieved a MAPE of 2.02%. The presented PV emulator is a useful tool to emulate solar PV panel output with any weather conditions in the laboratory.