A simple model of photovoltaic module electric characteristics

Power electronics is used in an increasing number of applications as connecting element between photovoltaic modules and electric loads. The design of power converters for these applications needs to consider hereby the electrical characteristics of solar cells. To support this, a behavioural model has been developed to characterise current, voltage and power of photovoltaic modules as function of solar cell temperature and solar radiation. It has the advantage to use only parameters that are available from data sheets plus a single fit parameter. Calculated diagrams are compared with diagrams of two photovoltaic module data sheets.