Design and Controller-In-Loop Simulations of a Low Cost Two-Stage PV-Simulator

Sridhar Vavilapalli, Umashankar Subramaniam, Sanjeevikumar Padmanaban and Frede Blaabjerg
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Sridhar Vavilapalli: Department of Energy and Power Electronics, School of Electrical Engineering, VIT University, Vellore 632014, India
Umashankar Subramaniam: Department of Energy and Power Electronics, School of Electrical Engineering, VIT University, Vellore 632014, India
Sanjeevikumar Padmanaban: Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, 6700 Esbjerg, Denmark
Frede Blaabjerg: Center of Reliable Power Electronics (CORPE), Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, 9100 Aalborg, Denmark

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 10, 1-15

Abstract: A PV-Simulator is a DC power source in which the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of different PV arrays can be programmed. With a PV-simulator, the operation of the solar power conditioning systems can be validated at a laboratory level itself before actual field trials. In this work, design, operation and controls for a two-stage programmable PV-simulator required for the testing of solar power conditioning systems are presented. The proposed PV-simulator consists of a three-level T-type active front-end converter in the first stage and a buck-chopper-based DC-DC converter in the second stage. An active front-end rectifier using a three-level T-type IGBT-based converter is used at the input stage to help in operating the system at unity power factor. A DC-DC converter at the output stage of the simulator is regulated to obtain the I-V characteristics of the programmed PV-Array. Hardware-In-Loop simulations are carried out to validate the proposed system and the associated controls implemented in the controller. As a case study, this PV-simulator is programmed with electrical parameters of a selected PV-array and the characteristics obtained from the PV-simulator are compared with the actual PV-array characteristics. The dynamic response of the system for sudden changes in the load and sudden changes in irradiance values are studied.

Keywords: buck-chopper; PV-simulator; T-type converter; real time simulator (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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