A Novel DC-DC Converter Design for On-Field Impedance Spectroscopy on Individual Photovoltaic Modules

Impedance Spectroscopy has gained significant attention as a powerful diagnostic tool for photovoltaic systems, offering valuable insights into module health and performance. This work presents a specially designed and optimized Ćuk converter in Gallium Nitride technology for conducting impedance measurements on individual solar panels within photovoltaic installations. The converter has been carefully sized using dedicated modeling techniques to achieve precise impedance characterization up to 50 kHz. A prototype of the proposed converter, serving as the power stage of a portable instrument, has been implemented on a printed circuit board and tested on a 120 Wp poly-Si solar module. The experimental results prove the applicability of the proposed approach for on-field characterization, showing an estimation error of less than 1.26%.