Laboratory emulation of a photovoltaic module for controllable insolation and realistic dynamic performance

In this paper, a high fidelity, easy-to-implement photovoltaic (PV) module emulator is presented. The proposed emulator can replicate the electrical behavior of a sunlight illuminated PV module in an indoor environment. The construction of this emulator requires only a PV module and basic laboratory equipment, while still providing dynamic performance that closely matches that of an illuminated PV module in an outdoor environment. The output I-V characteristics of the PV module under real sunlight and that of the proposed emulator were experimentally obtained and compared, such that the functionality of the proposed emulator was verified. An in-depth analysis of the PV module output small-signal impedance is also presented to illustrate the dynamic performance of this emulator.