The design and testing phase of photovoltaic (PV) power systems requires timeconsuming\nand expensive field-testing activities for the proper operational evaluation of maximum\npower point trackers (MPPT), battery chargers, DC/AC inverters. Instead, the use of a PV source\nemulator that accurately reproduces the electrical characteristic of a PV panel or array is highly\ndesirable for in-lab testing and rapid prototyping. In this paper, we present the development of a\nlow-cost microcontroller-based PV source emulator, which allows testing the static and dynamic\nperformance of PV systems considering different PV module types and variable operating and\nenvironmental conditions. The novelty of the simple design adopted resides in using a low-cost\ncurrent generator and a single MOSFET converter to reproduce, from a fixed current source, the\nexact amount of current predicted by the PV model for the actual load conditions. The I-V\ncharacteristic is calculated in real-time using a single diode exponential model under variable and\nuser-selectable operating conditions. The proposed method has the advantage of reducing noise\nfrom high-frequency switching, reducing or eliminating ripple and the demand for output filters,\nand it does not require expensive DC Power source, providing high accuracy results. The fast\nresponse of the system allows the testing of very fast MPPTs algorithms, thus overcoming the main\nlimitations of state-of-art PV source emulators that are unable to respond to the quick variation of\nthe load. Experimental results carried on a hardware prototype of the proposed PV source emulator\nare reported to validate the concept...................
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