A Lab based review of solar PV products on Uganda's market.

Abstract

In Uganda, despite the testing being done by the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) and the Centre for Research in Energy and Energy Conservation (CREEC) as per the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards, the quality of solar products has continued to reduce. Of all the tests that are specified in the IEC standards for testing solar equipment, only a handful are carried out in Uganda’s labs. This leads to equipment entering the market that has not been certified to meet the approved standards thus the low quality of solar PV products on the market. The focus of this paper is going to be on charge controllers since absolutely no tests are carried out on them and yet they are the most important equipment in a solar system. It controls the charging of the battery from the solar panel and discharges it to the load. This paper is aimed at showing that the tests not carried out on the charge controllers have an impact in the long run on the performance of the system. It will include simulations carried out in MATLAB and physical tests in the lab. The test samples of charge controllers were made subject to the testing protocol developed for the LVD and HVD tests.