Buck converter design for photovoltaic emulator application

Abstract

Photovoltaic (PV) emulator (PVE) allows the development and testing of the PV equipment and system effectively. The PVE is an alternative to controllable light source that requires a large space and highly inefficient. The PVE requires a power converter and the buck converter is preferred due to the control simplicity and high efficiency. Nonetheless, the conventional design of the buck converter cannot be used since the output voltage of the PVE highly dependent on the output resistance. A proper design of the buck converter specified for the PVE application is needed to maintain continuous current mode operation and the output voltage ripple factor below the desired specification. This paper proposed the design for the passive components for the PVE using buck converter, which includes the output resistor, inductor, and capacitor. The single diode model is used to produce the current-resistance characteristic curves of the PV. The control strategy of the PVE is not included in this paper. The results show that the passive components for the buck converter obtained from the derivation able to maintain continuous current mode and has the output voltage ripple factor lower than the desired specification when operates as the PVE. This proves the derivation of the passive components is accurate.