Solar array system simulation using FPGA with hardware co-simulation

In this paper an attempt has been made to realize the solar photovoltaic (PV) characteristics and its control through solar array simulation system designed using field programmable gate array (FPGA) with hardware co-simulation. This facilitates the virtual test bench to test the I-V and P-V characteristics of the solar PV module and performance of the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm. The test system consists of boost DC-DC power converter, which is controlled by Xilinx/FPGA based control unit to demonstrate the perturb and observe (P&O) MPPT algorithm employed for the solar PV module. The results of the simulated solar PV module are verified with the practical solar PV module characteristics. The results of the MPPT verify the performance of the proposed solar array simulation system. The real time simulation study is carried with Xilinx System Generator (XSG) and Matlab/Simulink simulation environment.