Electrical Modelling Of a Photovoltaic Module

This paper presents a generalized photovoltaic (PV) model using non-linear equations of current and voltage for the array. The current-voltage (I-V) and power-voltage (P-V) characteristics of the array are determined considering the effect of sunlight irradiance and cell temperature. Within the model, different electrical parameters such as maximum power (Pmp), current at maximum power (Imp), voltage at maximum power (Vmp), open-circuit voltage (Voc) and short-circuit current (Isc) are obtained in terms of solar irradiance and environment temperature changes. These electrical parameters are obtained through an equivalent circuit model which consists of a photocurrent source, a diode, a series resistor and a shunt resistor. The performance of the solar cell is evaluated under the standard test conditions with an average solar spectrum of air mass (AM) coefficient of 1.5, normalized irradiance of 1 kW/m2 and cell temperature of 25oC. A comparative study of the simulation results with the manufacturer's data is performed in order to validate the proposed equivalent electrical model. Furthermore, an experimental test bench is built and the obtained experimental results are compared with simulation results and are found to be in good agreement.