Digital Solar Array Simulator

Nowadays, with the economic development of science and technology, there is a sudden demand for fossil fuels. However, the world's total non-renewable energy sources such as coal, oil and gas are limited, people can not use them forever, so it has been a topic for us to search for new energy sources instead of the non-renewable energy sources. After decades of exploration, people pay more and more attention to the new energy sources such as wind, solar, and so on. Especially, the research on Photovoltaic Grid-Connected Power System, has been carried out with full of passion by many countries and regions. Although Photovoltaic Grid-Connected Power System has unique advantages, the process of system development is often restricted to the expensive costs of solar panel and the bad weather conditions. So the developing of solar power system was inefficient and expensive because of the insufficient of developing tools. This paper aimed to design one kind of experimental tool--the photovoltaic array simulator, which is very important to the developing process of solar energy power system.The paper firstly describes the research background of the photovoltaic array simulator and significance. Then it discusses the characteristics of the solar cell, and establishments the mathematical model. Finally the related algorithm is raised to find the load operating point, which makes basis of theory for the simulator system.A four-level conversion circuit of the main power topology is presented based on the hardware circuit requirements of the system. Designing of parameters of devices are finished together. The MCU of TMS 320 F 2812 of TI is selected to fit the need of high performance computing.At last, the experimental results are presented in the paper, and it proves that the simulator of my design has a good steady-state and dynamic-state performance. We can get the stable working points which tallies with the ones on the simulated I-V output curve of the solar array, the simulator can dynamically transform to another state when the load changes, so our design is correct.