INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 5, ISSUE 06, JUNE 2016 ISSN 2277-8616 328 IJSTR©2016 www.ijstr.org Development Of A Computerized I-V-Tracing System For Solar PV Module Testing Gour Chand Mazumder, Partha Ranjan Biswas, Nasif Shams, Saiful Huque, Md. Habibur Rahman Abstract: this paper is about a development work of I-V-Curve tracing system. The system is automatic and replaces manual procedure of conventional I-V-Curve tracing method for Photovoltaic Solar Cell or Panel. This system is basically a combination of several blocks consisted by electronic devices and instrument groups. Some blocks are developed for measurement requirements and some are proprietary. This instrument can be used at solar module assembling industry for panel testing. In recent years there are significant rises on the counts of these types of business in developing countries. As this particular requires much lesser cost in comparison to other such type, it is expected that this device may contribute to solar industry to help manufacturing process and quality control. Universities and laboratories may also find this suitable for their purpose. Although there are some little fluctuations in the acquired data, the system can analyze the module characteristics properly. Keywords: Solar Photovoltaic Module; I-V-Characteristics Curve, Voltage sensor; Current Sensor; Staircase Generator; Active Load; Threshold Attenuation; Arduino Uno; Fill Factor ———————————————————— I. INTRODUCTION This particular system is capable to measure performance parameters of a solar cell as well as module automatically. Fig.1. Connection Diagram of Conventional Method I-V- Tracing The performance parameters are IV characteristics curve, Maximum power point, Fill factor etc. Conventional Method of determining these parameters is a tedious manual process. Beside this there is a common problem occurs in this measurement setup. When very low resistance is applied, huge current flows and burns the resistance. In that method a variable resistance is needed to be connected with PV module. This resistance is used as the load. Generally a Potentiometer is used for this purpose. Someone needs to change the load manually and take voltage and current data corresponding to that load. Meanwhile the solar radiance data should be recorded. This instrument incorporates these tasks altogether, automates the process and solves problems. Beside this the system will be accessible and can be run from a computer and data will be saved in hard drive which facilitates easy calculation later. To do so a handful number of individual working units were developed and synchronized their tasks. Figure01 shows a conventional method of determining I-V-Curve tracing. At the time of system design the philosophy of conventional system was kept in mind and an active load was developed to replace the manual variable resistance. This Fig. 02. The block diagram of the entire system. active load is actually a programmable variable resistance. The program was set to trigger a staircase circuit. Stair case circuit will continue to change active load resistance level. At different level of resistance the current and voltage values from the panels will be different. Data at each value of resistance was taken. It was scoped by the program. Active load plays a very important role to automate overall measurement process of this system. Arduino sends a clock signal to the staircase circuit resides in acquisition card. When staircase unit receives a clock signal it starts changing the resistance level of active load. Staircase generator controls the active load. A battery was used to ________________________  Gour Chand Mazumder, Institute of Energy, University Of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh, g.c.mazumder@gmail.com  Partha Ranjan Biswas, Institute of Energy, University Of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh, Partha_ranjan@yahoo.com  Nasif Shams, Institute of Energy, University Of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh, nasishams@gmail.com  Saiful Huque, Institute of Energy, University Of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh, saifulhq@yahoo.com  Md. Habibur Rahman, The Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and The Institute of Energy, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh. mhabib@univdhaka.edu