A simple solar simulator with highly stable controlled irradiance for solar panel characterization

Abstract

A solar simulator suitable for universities’ lab was designed and developed using a quartz tungsten halogen lamp as its light source, an alternating current phase-cut dimmer, a light intensity meter, and an ATMega328p microcontroller with a computer and a liquid crystal display. Noting that the quartz tungsten halogen lamp suffers bulb overheating and long-term degradation that leads to the decrease in its light intensity, a control mechanism was applied. The control mechanism employed a proportional–integral–differential action with Some-Overshoot Ziegler–Nichols tuning rule. It was shown that the control mechanism works well in stabilizing the quartz tungsten halogen lamp irradiance between 273 and 1182 W/m2. The developed solar simulator was then tested to obtain I-V (current–voltage) characteristics of 3 W peak and 5 W peak commercial solar panels (GH Solar, GH5P-9). Based on the gained I-V characteristics, it was shown that the obtained characteristics of the commercial solar panels are in the range of the characteristics provided by the manufacturer’s data sheets. The developed quartz tungsten halogen lamp-based solar cell simulator can therefore be used to characterize solar cells.