Maximum Power Point Tracking Implementation under Partial Shading Conditions Using Low-Cost Photovoltaic Emulator

Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) is a pivotal objective for photovoltaic (PV) systems. To test various MPPT techniques, a reliable and effective PV emulator is required. Therefore, this article proposes a low-cost PV emulator for partial shading conditions, in which a cascaded structure of a DC power source with a resistor is constructed to generate the multiple peaks of the power-voltage (P-V) curve. The proposed structure is simple and modular. Consequently, it can be extended to obtain several peaks in the P-V characteristics to emulate more complex partial shading conditions. The partial shading occurrence over the PV source (PV array) causes a significant power loss production from the PV system. To increase the PV system’s efficiency, optimization techniques are employed to harness the global power. Accordingly, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique is used to track the global peak. Furthermore, the conventional perturb and observe (P&O) method is applied for comparison and investigation. The proposed PV emulation system is validated under different operating conditions using simulation and experimental hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) results.