Development of arduino assisted data acquisition system for solar photovoltaic array characterization under partial shading conditions

This research proposed the data acquisition system (DAS), which has a capability to collect real-time voltage and current at variable load resistance during an experimental characterization analysis of 3 × 3 size, photo voltaic (PV) system, under partial shading conditions (PSCs). In addition, the system is economical and minimizes the testing period for PV system characterization relative to traditional approaches. Analogue voltage and current sensors are integrated with the open-source Arduino platform to quantify and store real-time performance data in the SD card assembly. Performance parameters such as voltage and power at global maximum power point (GMPP), with minimized power loss (PL) and improved fill factor (FF) shows the effectiveness of the proposed system under the PSCs. Real-time hardware is developed and its performance is compared with the MATLAB/Simulink performance, with percentage errors as low as 0.48%, 1.95% and 1.37% under different shading case.