Simulations Based on Experimental Data of the Behaviour of a Monocrystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Module

Abraham Dandoussou,Martin Kamta,Alexis Kuitché,Laurent Bitjoka,Patrice Wira

doi:10.1155/2015/169015

Abstract

The performance of monocrystalline silicon cells depends widely on the parameters like the series and shunt resistances, the diode reverse saturation current, and the ideality factor. Many authors consider these parameters as constant while others determine their values based on the I-V characteristic when the module is under illumination or in the dark. This paper presents a new method for extracting the series resistance, the diode reverse saturation current, and the ideality factor. The proposed extraction method using the least square method is based on the fitting of experimental data recorded in 2014 in Ngaoundere, Cameroon. The results show that the ideality factor can be considered as constant and equal to 1.2 for the monocrystalline silicon module. The diode reverse saturation current depends only on the temperature. And the series resistance decreases when the irradiance increases. The extracted values of these parameters contribute to the best modeling of a photovoltaic module which can help in the accurate extraction of the maximum power.

Highlights

The world energetic consumption is still dominated by the use of nonconventional sources like fossil sources, natural gases, and nuclear sources
The results confirm that the diode reverse saturation current IS effectively depends on the temperature and the mathematical expression obtained in the literature has been validated [6,7,8,9]
The results show that the PV module modeled with the variable PV parameters is more accurate than the one modeled with the constant series resistance and the constant diode ideality factor

Summary

Introduction

The world energetic consumption is still dominated by the use of nonconventional sources like fossil sources, natural gases, and nuclear sources. The main drawback of the use of these sources is that they are exhaustible and they contribute to the pollution of the environment. It is useful to use renewable energy sources such as biomass, wind energy, hydroelectricity, and solar energy. Solar energy occupies an important place because it is available everywhere. Photovoltaic energy which is based on the conversion of direct sunlight into electricity is the most promising one. There are different technologies of photovoltaic (PV) cells which are found on the market: monocrystalline silicon (efficiency of 25 ± 0.5%), polycrystalline silicon (efficiency of 20.4 ± 0.5%), amorphous silicon (efficiency of 10.1 ± 0.3%), and organic solar cells (laboratory efficiency of 8.3 ± 0.3%) [1, 2]

Methods

Results

Conclusion