A photovoltaic emulator (PVE) is a specialized instrument that has the potential to reproduce the static and dynamic characteristics of a solar panel. This instrument has become a key milestone in the testing and validation of PV systems. Thus, despite the uncontrolled fluctuations in actual environmental conditions, the PVE offers a controllable environment, allowing smooth implementation and testing of PV subsystems. The PVE is structured around two indispensable elements, the reference PV model and the PVE power electronics controller. To enhance the simplicity of the PVE, these two elements must be inherently simple. Several advanced approaches to efficiently integrating the PV model into the PVE system have been developed in the literature. Nonetheless, these methods are still highly complex, since they often rely on iterative computation of intricate equations of solar panels. To surmount such limitations, this paper introduces a novel PVE aimed at simplifying the implementation and integration of the PV model into the PVE system. The proposed system uses a simple and iteration-free approach for providing the reference to the PVE. This approach is based on a straightforward explicit model of the solar panel. As compared to contemporary works, the proposed PVE stands out for high flexibility and simplicity, not requiring the complex iterative computations of the implicit equations of the solar panel model. The overall PVE system is implemented with a simple proportional-integral (PI) controller and a DC-DC Buck power electronic converter, and validated on a 200W solar panel. A series of experiments are conducted for both varying PVE loads and diverse environmental test profiles. The acquired results revealed that the proposed PVE efficiently reproduces the static and dynamic characteristics of the solar panel.