Laboratory electronic circuit for tracing I–V and P-V characteristics of photovoltaic devices

This paper presents an analog electronic circuit which traces the current-voltage (I-V) and power-voltage (P-V) characteristics of photovoltaic (PV) devices, using an appropriate varying electronic load. The circuit is developed for teaching solar cells performance and parameters at the Department of Electronics, Ruse University “A. Kanchev”. Experimental based teaching enhances students' interest, deepens their knowledge and developed practical skills for PV characterization and extracting the main parameters from the characteristics. The tool can be used for investigation of the indoor photovoltaic performance under different light sources (spectrum and light intensity) and different angles of the light incidence. The instrument has been designed, constructed and calibrated with the calibration measurements showing maximum relative error less than 2 %.