A photovoltaic emulator using dSPACE controller with simple control method and fast response time

Abstract

This paper presents a DSP- and DC-DC converter- based photovoltaic (PV) emulator which can simulate the output characteristic of a real PV module. The control mechanism is a combination of the current mode controller with a modified look up table of PV module characteristic which generates the reference current based on the measurement of converter output voltage and current. A prototype of the PV emulator is built to validate the proposed control method. The experimental results shows that the designed PV emulator has a fast transient response as well as steady state operating points well fitted with theoretical characteristic.