Real-Time Simulation and Research on Photovoltaic Power System based on RT-LAB

The maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controller in the Photovoltaic system is the key to verify all kinds of MPPT control algorithms. But the development of actual controller has the defects of needing long periods, artificial code writing and so on. RT-LAB real-time simulation platform is an advanced model-based engineering design and test application platform. The outstanding real-time performance in the current experimental study and engineering design made it used more and more widely. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce its hardware and software structure and realtime performance in detail. This paper gave a comprehensive and systematic introduction to hardware architecture, software architecture and simulation process of RT-LAB. It also presented a semi-physical simulation experiment of photovoltaic system MPPT using the features of Photovoltaic MPPT and semi-physical Real-Time simulation technology. The MPPT control strategy is achieved by establishing model using Simulink package. Other parts of the main circuit were physical circuit except controller. The parameter adjustment functions of online RT-LAB can easily optimize controller parameters. Two special tools, ARTEMIS and RT-Events used in power electronics were described in detail. The RT-LAB software modeling standard was also illustrated. The testing results showed that the usage of RT-LAB for the development of photovoltaic controller can resolve many problems in the current controller development. The application of RT-LAB in photovoltaic systems provides a reference for the micro grid, smart grid and other real-time systems.