Programmable DC Power Supply based Solar PV Module Emulator using LabVIEW and Multisim

Abstract

The performance evaluation of solar Photo-Voltaic (PV) based energy conversion system under varying environmental conditions is tedious and difficult. Therefore, a Solar Photo-Voltaic Module Emulator (SPVME) based on Programmable DC source is presented in this paper. Multisim software is employed to emulate the PV module characteristics and a Programmable DC power supply is used to replicate the emulated PV module. LabVIEW acts as a Hardware in the Loop platform to integrate the emulated solar PV module developed with the programmable DC power supply. The experimental setup of the proposed SPVME is analyzed with the parameters of 200 W PV string under real-time weather data and the output results are compared with a real-time PV string output. A solar PV system with Perturb and Observe (P&O) MPPT algorithm is tested using the SPVME prototype and the system performance is also validated.