Characteristics of Steady-state, Pulse, and Programmable of Tungsten Halogen Solar Simulator

The steady-state and pulse solar simulators were the light source to measure the current-voltage characteristics of the photovoltaic (PV) cell or panel or test for the hot spot endurance test according to the IEC 61215 and the IEC 61646 standards. The programmable solar array simulator tests the PV system, but it is high cost. The programmable solar simulator is the choice for the lower price. This paper presents the low-cost programmable tungsten solar simulator with 8.0% non-uniformity 3.0% steady-state temporal instability. The test plane irradiance was according to the reference with a correlation coefficient of 0.95.