A novel simulation method for PV power generation systems using real weather conditions

In PV power generation systems, huge system apparatus are needed in order to verify the effect of system efficiency and stability considering the size of solar panel, the sort of converter and the load condition. Also, under the same weather and load conditions, it is almost impossible to compare a certain MPPT control scheme with another. In order to remedy the above, one must realize the transient simulation of PV power systems using real field weather conditions. In this paper, the authors introduce how to apply real field weather conditions to EMTP and EMTDC, which are the most generalized transient analysis simulators. First of all, a solar cell is simulated with a V-I characteristic equation of the solar cell, and real field data of weather conditions are interfaced to EMTP and EMTDC programs using a Fortran program interface method. As a result, comparing real data of a PV panel and the simulated data, the authors obtained hopeful answers and made the simulation of PV power generation system much closer to reality. As a merit of using this proposed simulation method, stability and efficiency analyses according to various MPPT controls are possible under the same weather conditions