A simple iterative method to determine the electrical parameters of photovoltaic cell

Abstract

This paper aims to determine the unknown electrical parameters of photovoltaic modules. The proposed technique adopts an iterative process of the shunt resistance with numerical computing to find other parameters of the five parameters model. This numerical operation is based on solving determined equations from datasheet manufacturer at standard test conditions (STC). The criteria to extract the anonymous parameters is to achieve the lowest value of error between datasheet and simulated powers at the maximum power point (MPP). To highlight the performances of this method, three photovoltaic panels of different technologies are used. Namely, Monocrystalline (Mono-Si), polycrystalline (Poly-Si) and thin-film PV module. In fact, the current-voltage (I–V) characteristics provided by manufacturers and literature-based techniques are compared to the simulated ones using the determined parameters. Also, a comparative study between the proposed method and the chosen techniques is conducted. The obtained results demonstrate a good agreement between simulated and datasheet curves for various levels of solar irradiance and temperature with the highest value of error which not exceed 4.38%. Also, the proposed method provides a good compromise between simplicity and efficiency compared to the literature-based techniques.