Simulation software for solar energy management system

[sougatachakraborty50]

Hello everyone!
I need to simulate a solar energy management system (grid-tie). Not large scale, just for 2-3kW. The system would contain pv array, mppt charge controller, battery, inverter etc. I also have to send the total electricity generated to a mobile app. Before building the actual system, I would like to simulate the system. Which simulation software should I use for this?

[NiHaoMike]

Pretty easy to do with Python, the hard part is getting actual solar and energy use data. I suggest using a small solar panel (one for a calculator or garden light would be ideal) connected to an Arduino or similar and positioned at about the same angle and location as the center point of the actual array. For completeness, set up a time lapse camera so you can tell which panels in the array would be shaded at different times, keeping in mind the angle of sunlight will change throughout the year so beware of shadows getting close to the array area.

Getting the real time energy use is easy in theory but there are a lot of things to consider in practice, namely having to work around high voltages when installing the sensors. One method I suggested a long time ago was a FM transmitter connected to some current sensors along with a FM receiver plugged into one channel of a sound card combined with an attenuated AC signal (easily done with an AC wall wart feeding a voltage divider) on the other channel, easy way to get isolation from the mains while preserving waveform accuracy. I'm sure there are better ways nowadays.

[sougatachakraborty50]

Thanks for your input. But point being, the development and installation will be taken care of by different members of my group. I am just searching for a simulation software (if anything better than Simulink) to model the entire system.

[NiHaoMike]

If you have the data, you can just use a Python script to calculate what the system does at various points in time. Consider it as an energy in vs energy out problem. Where things get a bit open ended is that in many cases, the end user can greatly reduce the cost of the system by rescheduling loads.

[max_torque]

If you have Mathworks Simulink, then use it!

It is "industry standard" across a huge range of sciences.  The only reason not to use it, is cost (non student licences are quite expensive)