The aim of this paper is to study and produce a programmable emulator for photovoltaic panels. A uniform solar illumination model, a partially shaded model with two photovoltaic modules in series and a partially shaded model with two photovoltaic modules in parallel are proposed in this paper. Solar illumination and ambient temperature can be set on the emulator to emulate the behavior of a photovoltaic panel and to explore the effect of its being polluted by dust, shaded by clouds or solar oblique incidence. When making the physical models, a digital signal processor is used to calculate the quiescent points of the photovoltaic panels according to the load resistance and characteristics of the photovoltaic panels, and a DC (direct current)/DC buck power converter is adopted to adjust the output of the emulator in accordance with the quiescent points. To reduce the DSP's (digital signal processor) calculation burden, a characteristic curve segmentation method is proposed. This study successfully develops a 300 W/60 V emulator for photovoltaic panels under uniform solar illumination and partially shaded conditions. The load is changed over and over again so as to sketch the V-P curve and confirm the feasibility of the emulator. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.