PV Panel Emulator Based on Arduino and LabVIEW

This paper presents a low-cost PV emulator for testing PV panels in laboratory conditions. The emulator uses a DC power supply and a DC-DC converter. The converter is controlled through a closed-loop control system. The controller is an Arduino UNO board that regulates the output voltage of the converter. The reference value is given by a PV panel model simulated using a LabVIEW program running on a computer. The Arduino controller communicates with this computer via a USB connection, sending measurement values from the sensors (irradiance, temperature, and voltage) and receiving the reference value for the converter. It also displays the reference value on an electronic display. The software component of the emulator is based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) paradigm. The LabVIEW program houses the PV panel model but also works as an HMI (the view) for the user, displaying the measured and computed values, plotting the current operating point on the PV characteristic curves, etc. The C program running on the Arduino board is the controller.