Low cost I-V system employing variable power supply unit as an electronic load

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to design and construct a low-cost current-voltage tester, bearing in mind the short falls of the existing testers and the ever-increasing price of the testers currently on the market. The I-V tracer presented in this paper uses a variable external power supply...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of engineering, design and technology design and technology, 2012-01, Vol.10 (3), p.330
Main Authors: Simon, M, Meyer, E L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Power supply
R&D
Research & development
Studies
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to design and construct a low-cost current-voltage tester, bearing in mind the short falls of the existing testers and the ever-increasing price of the testers currently on the market. The I-V tracer presented in this paper uses a variable external power supply unit (PSU) as the load, in order to obtain the entire operating range of a PV module from open circuit through maximum power to short circuit condition. Design/methodology/approach - The I-V tracer presented in this paper was divided into three main sections, mainly the data acquisition system (DAS), which comprises an A/D computer card, temperature card, electromechanical relays, current and voltage transducers, aluminum housed resistors and power MOSFETS, the variable load (programmable variable PSU) and finally the signal processing unit. These components were integrated and finally interfaced to a PC. Findings - The results obtained using this system compared with the capacitive tester show a low percentage difference of
ISSN:1726-0531
1758-8901
DOI:10.1108/17260531211274701