LabVIEW based PV panel online characteristics and parameters estimation

This paper focuses and presents the online performance, characteristics evaluation and parameters estimations for stand-alone Photovoltaic (PV) panel. The PV panel is subjected to very harsh working surrounding conditions characterized by very high air temperature, very high humidity fluctuations. The local area experience heavy and seasonal dust storms. The area is rarely cloudy and the irradiation level is on the high side in most period of the year. This experimental work is centralized around Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench (LabVIEW) environment. Three LabVIEW graphical programming blocks are developed to acquire data, to present numerical display and to store environment and electrical parameters. The Fourth block is dedicated to execute graphical online display of environment data. The Fifth module follows and display the electrical variables under clean and dusty condition. The sixth block is designed to acquire the I-V and P-V characteristics simultaneously. The seventh module estimates series and shunt resistance of PV panel under changing condition. The developed environment was fast and accurate in collecting and storing the data. It was very satisfactory to monitor the weather parameters and its impact on the electrical PV performance. The developed system was successful to reach I-V and P-V characteristics accurately. The series and shunt resistance were estimated and found to very close to the simulation results.