Photovoltaic energy integration laboratory and experiments

A laboratory for education in modeling and integration of photovoltaic energy sources has been developed at the United States Military Academy. The primary purpose of this lab is to support a new Alternative Energy Engineering course and undergraduate capstone/research projects. The lab consists of a PV array, battery bank, maximum power point tracking charge controller, an inverter for local AC loads, grid interconnection, and programmable AC/DC electronic loads. The laboratory supports isolated testing and characterization of PV panels in addition to grid-tied or microgrid operation with energy storage. Additionally, load control, automatic acquisition, processing, and logging of data are accomplished with a combination of commercially available software and custom developed LabVIEW software. The following will be presented in this paper: i) the laboratory design, setup, and capabilities, ii) data acquisition iii) data processing, load control and integration, and iv) sample experiments and results.