Design and implementation of a buck converter-based PV emulator using dynamic evolution control

Abstract

This paper presents the design, simulation, and experimental implementation of a photovoltaic (PV) emulator based on a buck converter controlled using the dynamic evolution control (DEC) technique. The proposed system accurately reproduces the nonlinear current-voltage (I-V) and power-voltage (P-V) characteristics of a commercial GREEN CELL SM100-18P (100 Wp) PV module under standard test conditions (1000 W/m2, 25 °C). The electrical characteristics of the reference module are embedded in the controller through a lookup table (LUT), which is integrated with the DEC algorithm to enable adaptive real-time regulation of output voltage and current. System modeling and validation are first conducted in MATLAB/Simulink to analyze steady-state and transient performance. A hardware prototype based on an XL4016 buck converter and Arduino Nano microcontroller is then implemented, with real-time monitoring provided via an ILI9341 TFT display. Experimental results show that the emulator achieves a maximum power deviation of 0.8%, a normalized root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.015, a settling time of approximately 12 ms, overshoot below 1.5%, voltage ripple under 2%, and peak conversion efficiency of 94% near the MPP region. These results confirm that the proposed PV emulator provides accurate static and dynamic reproduction of PV characteristics, offering a low-cost, stable, and repeatable platform for laboratory-scale evaluation of PV-related power electronic converters.