International Journal of Power Electronics and Drive System (IJPEDS) Vol. 10, No. 3, Sep 2019, pp. 1645~1654 ISSN: 2088-8694, DOI: 10.11591/ijpeds.v10.i3.pp1645-1654  1645 Journal homepage: http://iaescore.com/journals/index.php/IJPEDS Design and implementation of an indoor solar emulator based low-cost autonomous data logger for PV system monitoring Oday A. Ahmad, Hussain Sayed, Kanaan A. Jalal, Dhari Y. Mahmood, Waleed H. Habeeb Departement of Electrical Engineering, University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Dec 6, 2018 Revised Mar 1, 2019 Accepted Apr 13, 2019 With the growing interest in renewable energy resources, a various number of studies and development for photovoltaic (PV) systems have investigated to satisfy global needs in energy. The larger interest in PV resources has increased request for suitable apparatus with which to test PV systems. This paper deals with the design of an indoor PV source emulator using an actual PV panel to facilitate PV system testing under real environment conditions. A low-cost Arduino Mega256 microcontroller-based data acquisition system (DAQ) approach has been developed to collect the data in term of voltage, power and current based on different levels of light intensity and temperature as well as under partial shading conditions. Hence, the proposed system is not just a solar emulator but it’s a complete solar emulator-DAQ system that can emulate the sunlight and monitor the PV parameters and then collect and store the data for further research investigation. The proposed monitoring system provides real time update of the solar panel characteristics at any time in the year without relying on the weather changes. This data acquisition system will be of superior interest for undergraduate and graduate students as it is both open-source and flexible. The details design of the proposed PV solar emulator and data logger and its implementation are described. Keywords: DAQ MPP Photovoltaics Solar emulator Copyright © 2019 Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved. Corresponding Author: Oday A Ahmed, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Technology, University of Technology Post Office, P.O. Box: 35299, Baghdad, Iraq Email: 30205@uotechnology.edu.iq 1. INTRODUCTION The enormous global energy consumption and the predictable depletion of traditional resources are mainly behind the growing interest in the sustainable and environmentally friendly means of generating electricity such as solar energy. Renewable energy resources, particularly solar PV, are good alternatives. Unfortunately, the cost of photovoltaic modules has not so far been reduced enough to achieve global parity without subsidies. Low efficiency of existing solar power supply systems, without MPPT systems, may require nominal capacity for installation that makes solar PV expensive. Thus, it is always necessary to track the maximum energy from the solar panels to harvest all available energy from the cell. For example, failure to track a maximum global power point (MPP) under partial shading conditions is one of the main causes of large power loss. If one wants to find the MPP from the solar panel source, it should be working at different weather conditions to obtain the required data [1-3]. To test and evaluate these MPPT systems at any time in the year without relying on the weather changes, solar array emulator is, in fact, a necessary so that can replicate the characteristic of the real solar array. The PV emulator is required to emulate the sunlight so that the test circumstance is workable, controllable, and reproducible. The solar emulator can be used to emulate the sun irradiation indoor so that obtain the power-voltage curve of the PV that is required to determine the MPP. This is consequently results in accelerate of prototyping required for the greater integration of photovoltaic technology in the world.