Performance Based Analysis of Solar PV Emulators: A Review

Ever increasing demand of energy and continuous depletion of accessible standard energy resources has diverted the mind of researchers towards the efficient utilization of renewable resources of energy like sun, wind & sea water movement etc. for generation of electrical energy. Among all the renewable energy resources, solar energy is abundantly and almost uniformly available in most part of the world and is seen as a potential player in future energy market around the world. The advantages of electrical energy generation through sun include pollution free electricity generation, negligible maintenance and free availability. Electrical energy can be generated from sun by either directly converting the sunlight into dc electricity or through solar thermal energy. Energy through solar photovoltaic[SPV] has seen an enormous funding in research and development with ministry of new and renewable energy sources [MNRE], government of India, pumping in vital funds for its effective utilization in India. Electrical energy can be extracted from solar photovoltaic module or array during sunny days in the form of dc and can be converted to ac by the use of inverters and can be stored by using batteries for the use in night or in durations of unavailability of solar irradiations in rainy seasons. Solar PV module or array could be a combination of PV cells that can be connected in either series or parallel or combination of both to enhance the power output to the match the load demand. The output power of these photovoltaic modules is affected by varying environmental conditions like variation in irradiations and operating cell temperatures etc. The present work pertains to reviewing the development of solar PV emulator for testing and carrying out research activities on solar PV based system thereby providing the problems posed by its intermittent nature of dependence on the weather conditions. A through and critical analysis of various power electronic and conventional analog technologies in development of solar PV emulator has been carried out. The performance comparison of solar PV emulator presented in literature based on various parameters has also been presented.