Dual Active Bridge Converter-Enabled Flexible Solar Photovoltaic System Emulator for a Ship-Testing Electrical Microgrid

Integrating renewable energy resources, such as wind and solar photovoltaic (PV), into ships contributes to addressing the maritime industry's environmental and economic challenges. A modern solar PV emulator is a specialized power electronics converter that replicates a PV system's current-voltage characteristic under varying operating conditions such as temperature, irradiance and inverter's maximum power point tracking (MPPT). This enables flexible testing of energy management strategies without the need for an expensive and cumbersome physical solar generation infrastructure. This paper provides a design methodology that enables the single-phase dual active bridge (1p-DAB) converter topology to be the core component of a flexible solar PV emulator for a small-scale ship-testing microgrid. The design procedure is validated with time-domain simulations and experimental tests on an 8 kW, 400 V to 400 V full-scale prototype.