Development of a photovoltaic array emulator system based on a full-bridge structure

Abstract

Nowadays solar photovoltaic technology is becoming more and more important every day. Manufacturers and laboratories dedicated to photovoltaic (PV) equipment research and development are arising continuously, and so are their needs of having appropriate test equipments. In this paper, the design and construction of a photovoltaic array emulator (PVAE) is presented. PVAEs are systems able to behave electrically similar to PV arrays but without depending on weather conditions and capable to emulate PV array systems. That makes possible to perform different PV energy production systems tests under many diverse operation conditions and without depending on weather or much more expensive and larger systems. The proposed system consists on a 4.4 kW AC/DC power converter based on a DC/DC full-bridge structure and High Frequency (HF) transformer, that allows testing PV inverters' performance up to 4 kW and with a 650 V and 7 A input.