Novel load emulation technique for performance evaluation of isolated solar PV system under varying load conditions

Solar Photo Voltaic (SPV) sources are widely used in present scenario of energy crisis for various applications including grid connected PV plants and grid isolated standalone applications. The performance of solar PV system is highly dependent upon the operating conditions of source and loads especially in standalone applications. The effect on various types of loads on standalone system can be easily analyzed at design stage and testing stage by using load emulation technique, where a virtual load is used to replace actual load, giving more flexibility and accuracy to loading conditions. Here a novel load emulator model is presented which can provide accurate variation in load power factor and THD compared to existing models. The converter decouples the current in to in phase and out of phase components and the in phase component can be regenerated. The model is simulated using MATLABTM simulation and the results are validated by comparing with experimental results obtained by loading SPV inverter with actual load. Hence the proposed load emulator is very useful in design and development of application specific solar PV systems and also for performance analysis of such systems based on various standards.