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com

Solar Energy 86 (2012) 14771484

www.elsevier.com/locate/solener

A photovoltaic panel emulator using a buck-boost DC/DC

converter and a low cost micro-controller
Dylan D.C. Lu , Quang Ngoc Nguyen
School of Electrical and Information Engineering, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Available online 7 March 2012
Received 5 September 2011; received in revised form 8 February 2012; accepted 9 February 2012
Available online 7 March 2012
Communicated by: Associate Editor Nicola Romeo

Abstract
In order to facilitate the design and testing of photovoltaic (PV) power systems, a PV emulator which models the electrical characteristic of a PV panel or array is needed. Among dierent approaches to modeling PV characteristic, namely the IV curve, curve-tting is
a popular approach. Even though a single high-order polynomial equation may accurately represent the IV curve, the process of derivation and implementation is rather complex. This paper hence proposes the use of piecewise linear approach which is easier to derive
and implement in a low-cost micro-controller. A two-switch buck-boost DC/DC converter is selected as the PV emulator and is analyzed.
Experimental results on a hardware prototype of the proposed PV emulator are reported to show the eectiveness of the approach.
Crown Copyright 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: DC/DC converter; Photovoltaic; Micro-controller; Emulator

1. Introduction
The demand of photovoltaic (PV) power system installation has been increased over the past decade due to technological improvement, better environmental awareness,
lowered system costs, governmental initiatives, rising
electricity bills, etc. While these installed PV systems and
products are operating properly, there are still ongoing
issues to be investigated and solved. For example, reliability
of PV power systems (Petrone et al., 2008), PV power generation analysis (Ishaque et al., 2011; Paraskevadaki and
Papathanassiou, 2011) and electricity network performance
(van der Borg and Jansen, 2003) due to partial shading,
development of power electronics interfaces (Marsh, 2011,
2010), etc. All these research and development activities
require a stable, repeatable and variable PV source for
Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 2 9351 3496; fax: +61 2 9351 3847.

E-mail address: dylan.lu@sydney.edu.au (D.D.C. Lu).

design and testing. Hence there is a need of a PV generator

emulator.
The main task for a PV generator emulator is to reproduce the IV curve of a practical PV panel. There are dierent approaches to performing this task. In Nagayoshi
(2004), a pn photodiode is used and a DC power amplier
increases the power level to match with that of a PV panel.
However, this approach requires a light source and associated circuit to reproduce the IV curves of a PV panel. In
fact, a power electronics converter can mimic the IV curve
accurately with only a DC input voltage source (Mukerjee
and Dasgupta, 2007). In Khouzam and Homan (1996), a
AC/DC buck converter is used as the PV emulator to emulate a PV cell circuit model. However this approach requires
the knowledge of the values of the parameters which are
usually dicult to obtain. In fact, to model a PV panel,
one may use the data available from the datasheet of the
PV panel manufacturer and derive an analytical model to
represent the IV curves (Ortiz-Rivera and Peng, 2005).

0038-092X/$ - see front matter Crown Copyright 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.solener.2012.02.008

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D.D.C. Lu, Q.N. Nguyen / Solar Energy 86 (2012) 14771484

Look-up table and curve tting are two popular

approaches to implementing IV curves of a PV panel by
the power electronics converters. Look-up table would
require a large memory storage of the micro-controller as
large amount of panel data is stored if many IV curves
at dierent conditions and with high accuracy are implemented. Hence to implement look-up table in a low cost
micro-controller which has limited memory space is usually
dicult. Curve-tting approach in general uses one or
more polynomial equations to model an IV curve and
needs a digital controller with fast computational speed
to nd the solution. While this method requires less memory space, the non-linearity of the IV curve requires the
equations to be of higher orders which may increase the
computational time substantially. A powerful DSP controller is usually needed to produce very fast and accurate
results (Zhang and Zhao, 2010). Also the derivation process of the polynomial equations for dierent conditions
such as insolation and temperature is rather troublesome.
In order to use curve-tting eciently on a low-cost
micro-controller, this paper introduces a PV emulator
using multiple simple linear equations to mimic an IV
curve of the PV panel. This approach reduces computational time while maintaining sucient accuracy and can
be implemented in a low-cost 8-bit micro-controller. The
paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the circuit
and operation principle of the proposed PV emulator. Section 3 reports the experimental results of the emulator
which models a BP Solar SX-10 PV panel. Section 4 discusses the limitations of the emulator and followed by
the conclusions in Section 5.
2. Description of the PV emulator
2.1. System overview
The PV emulator, as shown in Fig. 1, consists of a DC
input source, Vin, a DC/DC converter for shaping the
output IV curves of the PV panel, a micro-controller for
sensing the output voltage vpv and current ipv, calculation
and sending duty cycle command, and a gate driver for

amplifying the incoming duty cycle command suitable for

driving the power transistor (MOSFET in this case). The
output load RL is modeled as a variable resistor to represent an equivalent resistance of a maximum power point
tracker (MPPT).
2.2. Mathematical modeling of a PV panel
Apart from measuring an actual PV panel, one can also
use an analytical model to represent the data in the datasheet from the manufacturer to obtain the IV curves of
a specic PV panel. In Ortiz-Rivera and Peng (2005), the
authors have generated an analytical model for a PV panel
which is adopted in this paper:
IV a  I max  si



V
1

 1  exp
ba  c 1  cV max sV b

where a is the percentage of eective intensity of the light, b

is the characteristic IV curve constant, c is the shading linear factor, si is the rate of change with the temperature for
the current (A/C), sV is the rate of change with the temperature for the voltage (V/C) and Imax is the ideal maximum
current (when V = 1 at STC).
For this paper, a PV panel from BP Solar (Model: SX10) is modeled. Assuming no shading and using a = 1 and
others values provided by the datasheet (BP Solar PC SX10 data sheet, 2003), a numerical expression of this PV
panel can be found:


0:65
V
1
IV

1

2
1  e1=b
b  21 b
Using the maximum power point condition at 16.8 V and
0.59 A, the value of b can be calculated by (2) as
0.085. At 25 C, (2) can be further simplied to:
IV 0:651  eV =1:78511:7647 

Similarly at 75 C one can get:

IV 0:67111  eV =1:44511:7647 

Fig. 2 shows the MATLAB plot of the IV characteristic

curves of SX-10 PV panel Eqs. (3) and (4).
2.3. Two-line and multiple-line tting approaches
To generate N number of tting lines, N + 1 points from
the curve need to be selected. To begin with, a two-line
approach as shown in Fig. 3 is discussed. The two ends points
from the curve are the open-circuit voltage (21 V, 0 A) and
short-circuit current (0 V, 0.65 A). The third point is selected
(16.8 V, 0.62 A) as the maximum power point (MPP) of the
curve where the two lines converge. Therefore the two equations which represent the two lines are expressed as

Fig. 1. Block diagram of the PV emulator.

IV 0:65  0:004V

IV 2:94  0:14V

D.D.C. Lu, Q.N. Nguyen / Solar Energy 86 (2012) 14771484

Fig. 2. IV characteristics of SX-10 at 25 C and 75 C.

1479

Fig. 4. Five-line curve tting approach.

converter for the PV emulator. The design consideration

is that the converter is able to sweep through the entire
voltage range of the PV panel. For a buck converter, a
DC input voltage which is higher than the panel is required
as it is a step-down converter. The buck-boost converter is
more exible as it can perform both step-up and step-down
functions. The boost converter which is a step-up converter, however, can only operate when the input voltage
is lower than the output voltage hence it cannot reach
down to 0 V and cannot be used in this case.
3. Experimental setup and results
3.1. Design considerations and hardware description

Fig. 3. Two-line curve tting approach.

To improve the accuracy of the curve-tting method, ve

lines as shown in Fig. 4 are used. Similarly, with six points
selected, the ve equations which represent the ve lines are
given by
IV 2:94  9:2143e4 V for V 014

IV 0:8233  0:0133V for V 1416

IV 1:2633  0:0408V for V 1618

8
9

IV 2:1651  0:0909V for V 1819

IV 4:599  0:2190V for V 1921

10
11

2.4. DC/DC converter

Among the basic converters, buck and buck-boost
converters are able to be implemented as the DC/DC

To verify the proposed PV emulator for the BP SX-10

model, a hardware prototype is built and tested. The schematic of the PV emulator circuit is shown in Fig. 5. The reason to select a two-switch buck-boost converter for this
implementation is twofold. Firstly it can work with lower
input voltage (1215 V) that reduces the power loss when
the input voltage is used to step down further for the
micro-controller circuit (5 V). If a buck converter is used,
the input voltage has to be higher than 21 V which is the
open-circuit voltage of the PV panel. Secondly, the output
voltage is non-inverting as compared to the single-switch
buck-boost converter with inverting output. The advantage
is that the output ground will be the same for the input
ground and ground of other equipment which is connected
to the output of the PV emulator, e.g. a MPPT switching
converter. Another advantage is that the use of either splitting power supply or opto-coupler and associated circuit for
negative voltage feedback sensing, which added complexity
and slowed down the response of the system, is eliminated.
The two-switch buck-boost converter consists of two
power MOSFETs (Q1 and Q2), two diodes (D1 and D2),
an inductor (L1) and an output capacitor (C1), as shown

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D.D.C. Lu, Q.N. Nguyen / Solar Energy 86 (2012) 14771484

Fig. 5. Schematic of the proposed PV emulator based on a buck-boost converter.

in Fig. 5. The two power transistors Q1 and Q2 share the

same driving pulses from the Gate Driver block. When
both transistors are closed, the inductor is charged by the
input voltage. When the transistors are turned o, the
inductor is discharged via two diodes (D1 and D2) to output. By controlling the duty cycle of the transistors as a
result of the linear equations calculation as stated in Section 2.2, the IV curve of the PV panel is implemented.
For the micro-controller, a 8-bit PICAXE AXE-08M
chip is selected. It is a modied version of Microchip
PIC12F68 model. It has three ADC inputs and a PWM
output pin which is easily congured by a single-line command. The chip runs at 4 MHz and therefore it can operate
easily at 50 kHz switching frequency for the converter with
sucient accuracy and speed.
The inductor (L1) is chosen to operate in continuous
conduction mode (CCM) as it produces less conduction
loss. A 20% maximum current ripple in the inductor is
selected. At 50 kHz switching frequency, the minimum
inductance Lmin to meet such requirement is at 15 V input
and 21 V output (open-circuit voltage)
Lmin

V in  D
15  0:58
435 lH

fs  Di 50000  0:4

12

where Vin is the input voltage, D is the duty cycle of the

power switches, fs is the switching frequency, and Di is
the maximum current ripple.
In order to provide at least 12 V and oating gate drive
for the MOSFET, a high-side driver IR2117 is used. Since
the PICAXE chip operates at 5 V but the IR2117 driver

requires at least 9.6 V input, a simple transistor inverter

as a level lifting circuit is implemented. This small transistor (2N7000) requires only 2.5 V to drive. When a high
pulse from PICAXE chip is generated, the transistor is
turned on and pulled the output to ground. When a low
pulse is generated, the transistor is turned o and output
is risen up to Vcc (1215 V in this design).
The programming for PICAXE is done on a free programming editor provided by PICAXE. Once the program
is written it can be downloaded to the PICAXE AXE-08M
micro-controller chip via a USB cable (AXE027) or RS-232
cable (AXE028) connecting the computer and the chip
(Download Socket in Fig. 5). This cable is not a normal
USB or RS-232 connector as it contains some electronic
parts and it is pre-programmed. The programming language for PICAXE is similar to the BASIC language.
The program ow chart is shown in Fig. 6. The program
starts with dening the symbols for voltage and current
measurements and for counters. Then it outputs a small
duty cycle to start the buck-boost converter. Once the converter operates, the program can take readings from the
voltage and current (V_sense and I_sense in Fig. 5) to
determine the operating point for the PV panel the converter mimics. Note that we are using fractional open
voltage MPPT algorithm so only a voltage reading is
needed to operate the converter to the desired operating
point. The current measurement is only used for overloading protection. The PICAXE-08M chip can contain maximum of 8 linear equations so we have used 5 linear
equations for 75 C and 3 linear equations for 25 C. The

D.D.C. Lu, Q.N. Nguyen / Solar Energy 86 (2012) 14771484

1481

Fig. 7. Output voltage ripple of the PV emulator (Y-axis: 200 mV/div;

time scale: 10 ls/div).

Fig. 6. Program ow chart for implementation of 5-line for 75 C and 3line for 25 C of the BP SX-10 PV panel.

selection of what temperature to use is by providing a high

or low signal to available ADC input of the PICAXE (Pin
4). Here we selected signal high for 75 C and low for
25 C. After the temperature is selected, the program will
use the voltage reading to locate the nearest linear equation
to nd out the operating point. A new duty cycle is then
determined and produced from the PWM pin of the PICAXE and the converter duty cycle is updated. After that
the program goes back to the voltage and current checking
process and repeats the procedure. The full program code
for implementing the ve-line approach is shown in Appendix A.
3.2. Results
Fig. 7 shows the output voltage ripple of the PV emulator is less than 450 mV at 50 kHz switching frequency. The
On and O labels in the gure indicate the turn-on
instant and turn-o instant of the power transistors Q1
and Q2 for each switching period. The duration of On
period indicates the duty cycle of the transistors. And from
the waveform it can be observed that the converter is operating in continuous conduction mode (CCM) as the ripple
has only two stages, conrming our design in Section 3.1
and Eq. (12). Note that the voltage spikes during the
turn-on and turn-o instants and appeared beyond the horizontal cursors are due to the pick-up of electromagnetic

Fig. 8. Comparison between experimental and theoretical results on twoline approach.

noise from the voltage probe. Minimizing the ground loop

of the voltage probe will greatly reduce the pick-up. Fig. 8
shows the measured results on the prototype using the twoline approach. The results are very close to the two operating lines. Fig. 9 shows further results on the ve-line
approach at both 25 C and 75 C. Due to the memory
limitation of the micro-controller, only eight lines can be
implemented in a single program. Therefore Fig. 9 shows
5 lines for 25 C and 3 lines 75 C. Nevertheless, the measured results are closely matched with the theoretical
designed curves.
As shown in Fig. 10, the PV emulator reaches a maximum eciency of around 80% near maximum power point
voltage for both temperature settings. The low eciency
occurs at lower voltages because the output power of the
power converter is small and the switching losses of power
transistors and diodes are dominant. When PV emulator

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D.D.C. Lu, Q.N. Nguyen / Solar Energy 86 (2012) 14771484

Fig. 9. Comparison between experimental and theoretical results on veline approach and dierent temperature settings.

open voltage with a factor, usually between 0.7 and 0.78.

The converter will alter the duty cycle in order to adjust
the panel voltage to be equal to this MPP value. This
method is simple as no input current of the PV panel is
needed. The limitation of this MPPT approach is that the
MPP voltage is only an approximate value. Using the same
MPPT code, dierent operating conditions are tested to
conrm that the tracker can adapt to the change of the
environment. Fig. 12 shows the capability of the tracker
to reach the maximum power points at dierent temperatures and insolations.
The tracker has been tested with the PV panel emulator.
The tracker has successfully tracked the MPP voltages at
16.9 V for 25 C and 13.7 V for 75 C respectively which
are very close to the theoretical values. The results demonstrated that the performance of the PV panel emulator
reacts identically to the real PV panel which it models.

4. Discussions

Fig. 10. Measured eciency of the PV emulator at dierent temperature

settings.

voltage increases and is moving towards the maximum

power point, the output power of the converter also
increases. Since the rate of switching losses only increases
slightly as compared to the rate of increase of output
power, there is less switching losses proportionally to the
overall input power and the eciency improves as output
power increases as a result.
In order to demonstrate the usefulness of the PV emulator. A system is set up, as shown in Fig. 11, in which a buck
converter as a maximum power point tracker is connected
to the output of the PV emulator. The tracker is rst tested
using the real PV panel outdoor. Fractional open circuit
voltage technique (Esram and Chapman, 2007; Ahmad,
2010) is used as the MPPT algorithm in this case. Fractional open circuit voltage technique measures the open circuit voltage of the PV panel at the start-up process. And
the MPP is approximated by multiplying the measured

Using multiple straight lines to model an IV curve of

the PV panel is fast and straight-forward. The low cost
PICAXE-08 M chip has four basic mathematical functions:
addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and they
are well suited for this implementation. To improve the
accuracy of modeling further, however, exponential expressions can be used and a more powerful micro-controller
needed to be used. Also, as mentioned in Section 3.2, with
limited program memory (800 lines memory) of this microcontroller only eight lines can be implemented. But the
PICAXE family has higher end micro-controller to implement more number of lines, such as 40  2 with 3200 lines
memory.
The PICAXE-08 M chip has a pin dedicated to PWM
generation. By using the PWMOUT function in the
program, frequency and duty cycle are set using a single
command line. The resolution of the duty cycle increases
with decreasing switching frequency. For instance, at
50 kHz switching frequency, there are 80 steps. While at
40 kHz, the steps increase to 100. Larger steps of duty cycle
enable the converter to operate with smaller uctuation
when duty cycle has to be altered to adjust the output continuously due to change of input or output condition, provided the inductance and output capacitance have
increased to maintain the same ripple current and ripple
voltage with decreasing switching frequency.
The power losses of the PV emulator are mainly due to
conduction loss and switching loss. Conduction loss can be
reduced by using better devices with smaller internal resistance. This includes smaller turn-on resistance for power
transistor and diode, and less core loss and less copper
(winding) loss for the inductor. Switching loss can be
reduced by improving the slew rate of turn-o and turnon instances of the power transistor and of the power
diodes. For instance, we can use Silicon-Carbide (SiC)
instead of Silicon (Si) diodes. SiC diodes have negligible

D.D.C. Lu, Q.N. Nguyen / Solar Energy 86 (2012) 14771484

1483

Fig. 11. System setup for proposed PV emulator and a maximum power point tracker.

demonstrated the eectiveness and usefulness of the PV

emulator.
Appendix A. This appendix shows the original PICAXE
program code for 5-line approach for implementing the I
V curve of BP SX-10 PV panel at 25 C and 3-line approach at 75 C.

Fig. 12. Measured results on a maximum power point tracker using a

buck converter.

reverse-recovery current which usually causes additional

switching loss (Spiazzi et al., 2003).
5. Conclusions
This paper presents the design and implementation of a
PV emulator based on a two-switch buck-boost DC/DC
converter and a low cost 8-bit micro-controller. By using
multiple straight lines approach, the PV emulator can
mimic a PV panel with acceptable accuracy. The PV emulator has been tested using resistive loads as well as a maximum power point tracker. Experimental results have

symbol v = b1 dene symbols

symbol i = b2
symbol dc = b0
symbol t = b3
let dc = 75 set duty cycle for low start voltage
main:
pause 100
gosub changeduty
goto check
check:
pause 100
readadc 1, v read voltage into v = 1/5 voltage
value
readadc 4, i read current into i = current value
if v > 250 then goto overload voltage of pin
1 >= 5 V
if i > 51 then goto overload current ow >= 1 A
let t = i/5 i = i/5 because of voltage divider
let v = v -t calculate load voltage = V-2i
if pin3 = 1 then pin 3 = 1 (75 C); pin 3 = 0 (25 C)
if v < 123 then 0 to 12 V
let v = v/150
let v = 71/2 v equation I = 0.670.0017*V
elseif v > = 123 and v < = 153 then 12 to 15 V
let v = v*3/14
let v = 64 v equation I = 1.2380.049*V

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D.D.C. Lu, Q.N. Nguyen / Solar Energy 86 (2012) 14771484

elseif v > 153 and v < 182 then 15 to 17 V

let v = v*5/
let v = 219 v equation I = 4.2830.252*V
else
let dc = dc + 1 min 28
goto changeduty
endif
else if v < 143 then 0 to 14 V
let v = v/200
let v = 35 v equation I = 0.659 e-4*V
elseif v > = 143 and v < = 163 then 14 to 16 V
let v = v/15
let v = 45 v equation I = 0.82330.0133*V
elseif v > 163 and v < 184 then 16 to 18 V
let v = v/5
let v = 66 v equation I = 1.26330.04*V
elseif v > = 184 and v < 194 then 18 to 19 V
let v = 5*v
let v = v/11
let v = 113 v equation I = 2.16510.0909*V
elseif v > = 194 and v < 224 then 19 to 21 V
let v = 65*v
let v = v/61
let v = 238 v equation I = 4.5990.2190*V
else
let dc = dc + 1 min 28
goto changeduty
endif
endif
if i < v then
let dc = dc-1 min 28
goto changeduty
elseif i > v then
let dc = dc + 1 max 79
goto changeduty
else
goto check
endif
goto check
changeduty:
pwmout 2,19,dc
goto check
overload:
let dc = 75
gosub changeduty
goto main

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