Parameter Estimation Method to Improve the Accuracy of Photovoltaic Electrical Model

This paper proposes an estimation method to identify the electrical model parameters of photovoltaic (PV) modules and makes a comparison with other methods already popular in the technical literature. Based on the full single-diode model, the mathematical description of the I-V characteristic of modules is generally represented by a coupled nonlinear equation with five unknown parameters, which is difficult to solve by an analytical approach. The aim of the proposed method is to find the five unknown parameters that guarantee the minimum absolute error between the P-V curves generated by the electrical model and the P-V curves provided by the manufacturers' datasheets for different external conditions such as temperature and irradiance. The first advantage of the proposed method is that the parameters are estimated using the P-V curves instead of I-V curves, since most of the applications that use the electrical model want to accurately estimate the extracted power. The second advantage is that the value ranges of each unknown parameter respect their physical meaning. In order to prove the effectiveness of the proposition, a comparison among methods is carried out using both types of P-V and I-V curves: those obtained by manufacturers' datasheets and those extracted experimentally in the laboratory.