The Importance of Shunt Switching Recovery Time for Solar Array Simulators
During spacecraft integration and testing activities, the solar arrays are replaced by a Solar Array Simulator (SAS), which delivers electrical power to the power management subsystem by reproducing the electrical behavior of a real solar array. A SAS needs to output power with the same characteristics as an array of photovoltaic (PV) cells.
An overall goal for a SAS is to simulate the performance of real solar cells as closely as possible, both statically (voltage and current levels) and dynamically with respect to output capacitance, response time, etc. Therefore, the response time of the SAS Module output has been identified as one of the most important design drivers.