Contents I. Introduction
Due to increasing energy consumption and the brisk change of the climate. The demand of electrical energy has been increased. Augmenting the penetration of renewable energy with diminishing the use of fossil fuels is desirable. Photovoltaic (PV) is one of the most promising type utilized to generate electrical energy from renewable energy. Huge amounts of money and efforts have been invested into research and evolution in photovoltaic systems. This large interest in PV systems has increased the intention for a suitable emulating tool. Which can easily permit testing PV system equipments. Such as PV inverter and maximum power tracking algorithm under different environmental condition. As a consequence, it provides a good opportunity to teaching its characteristic and training researchers in this field. Moreover, the design of a PV based system and its performance evaluation test under different field conditions before installation on the site is desirable. Wherein, testing using commercial photovoltaic arrays has assured drawbacks of field testing such as the intensity dependence of output power on weather conditions, large size, high cost, time consuming and enormous variety of solar panels exist. It would be prohibitively expensive to purchase every type of panel and test it individually. A PV Emulator can be used to get over from all the previously stated drawbacks, for evaluating the performance of the complete PV based system in the laboratory without having an actual PV array. A PV emulator simulates the current-voltage output characteristics of actual PV arrays under different temperature and solar irradiation; as a consequence, it is a perfect tool to test Maximum Power Point Tracking algorithms or grid-connected PV system in laboratory, regardless of actual weather conditions. It also allows repeatable environmental conditions to test the PV modules which are not affected by external conditions such as solar irradiance and temperature.
