A New Strategy for Accurately Predicting I-V Electrical Characteristics of PV Modules Using a Nonlinear Five-Parameter Five-Point Model

This paper presents the modelling of electrical I-V response of illuminated photovoltaic crystalline modules. As an alternative method to the linear five-parameter model, our strategy uses advantages of a non-linear analytical five-point model to take into account the effects of nonlinear variations of current with respect to solar irradiance and of voltage with respect to cells temperature together with an improved semi-empirical equation correlating the parasitic series resistance to weather data. We succeeded in this work to predict with great accuracy the I-V characteristics of mono-crystalline SHELL SP75 and polycrystalline GESOLAR GE-P70 photovoltaic modules. The good comparison of our calculated results to experimental data provided by the modules manufacturers makes it possible to appreciate the contribution of taking into account the nonlinear effect of operating conditions data on series resistance of the modules.