Simulation and Analysis of Photovoltaic System Using Virtual Instrumentation

Renewable energy sources demand has been increasing rapidly due to their abundance in nature, environment friendly and also serves as decentralized power sources in rural areas.Solar energy is one such renewable energy source which produces electricity by means of photovoltaic effect. The disadvantage of solar energy is its output power depends on factors like temperature, intensity of sun light, sun angle of incidence. To extract maximum power from the solar array it has to be operated at maximum power point (MPP).Virtual Instrumentation (VI) is widely used in testing, measurement and control application as it is easy to understand and implement. In this thesis, maximum power point tracking (MPPT) of solar array is demonstrated using a virtual instrument (VI) created in LabVIEW. Voltage and current signals sensed from photo voltaic (PV) array are fed as input to the VI and control signal is obtained as output. The duty cycle of a buck converter which is placed between solar array and the load is controlled using the control signal. Incremental conductance (INC) algorithm is used for creating a LabVIEW VI that tracks maximum power. Faster tracking of power in the range of millisecond is observed