Design and Development of Photovoltaic Power Meter

The design, construction and test of an electronic system in order to measure of photovoltaic (PV) module power are reported. An interface electronic system was developed to couple the PV module toward an electronic control target with a personal computer. Samplings of the PV module current and voltage are captured analogically. The electronic system amplifies the electrical signal and converts to digital signal and also software was designed based in Matlab. After using this software the digital current and voltage signals are processed by the laptop to determinate the PV module power. The output short circuit current, open circuit voltage and maximum power of PV module were measured. In addition, the output current-voltage and power-voltage curves are achieved. This measurement system has advantages of simple, cost effective and applicable in the place where the modules are installed to measure the PV modules. Experimental results were done for different levels of incident solar power to measure capacity of PV modules installed in CINVESTAV-IPN, Mexico. The prototype developed has tolerance of 1.5% but it can be improved using precision electronic devices. We have obtained the I-V curve, P-V curve and maximum power point of the PV modules with the help of this prototype.