Real-Time Simulation Models for Photovoltaic Cells and Arrays in Opal-RT and Typhoon-HIL

The increase of solar power generation in the last decade makes reliance on this energy source of great importance, and highlights the need of studying photo-voltaic (PV) cells and modelling their behaviours. Consequently, efficient and accurate mathematical modeling and simulation of PV cells have become very important for different studies, e.g. their use in microgrids and as distributed energy resources in the grid. This paper reports a custom, homogeneous, cross-platform, real-time simulation model for PV cells, modules & arrays; and characterizes their performances when compared to other existing models. Once the model was successfully verified, its performance was analyzed in two different real-time hardware architectures: (i) OPAL RT OP5030 Simulator with OP4520 Expansion unit and (ii) Typhoon HIL 603 Simulator.