A Hardware-in-the-Loop Test Platform for a Vehicular Auxiliary Power System with Onboard PV

Increased power demands by auxiliary loads in service, military, recreational and emergency vehicles call for more effective approaches to the design, testing, and operation of vehicular auxiliary power systems. This paper describes the development of a laboratory test system to evaluate such power system designs. The developed system includes emulated loads and power sources, including photovoltaic arrays, and is built using an extensible event-driven software framework that can execute a wide range of test scenarios. The implementation of the hardware and software architectures of the system is described, and its operation is illustrated with experimental test profiles and results.