Research and development of fast field tester for characteristics of solar array

I-V characteristic of a solar array is very important for the design and long-term performance evaluation of a photovoltaic (PV) generation system. Manufacturers provide only I-V characteristic of (PV) modules at standard conditions in Lab. However, a PV generation system will operate at a widely variable environment conditions. Besides, the different combinations of PV Models in series and parallel may give rise to some energy loss because of nonuniform characteristic of individual PV modules. Therefore, accurate performance evaluation of a PV station faces great challenges. This brings about great needs for fast field testers for I-V characteristic of the solar array. This paper presents capacitor charging schematic for fast field testing of I-V characteristic of solar arrays. A prototype based DSP TMS320F2806 is designed and manufactured. The prototype is featured in automatic pre-estimated measurement scale by the theory model of I-V curve, and digital filtering of sampling data. The field experiment results show that the testing system operates stately, and with high measurement accuracy and speed. A complete testing procedure only takes about 10s, and the measured I-V characteristics of solar arrays can be displayed on LCD directly in the form of a curve.