Experimental Parameter Extraction in the Single-Diode Photovoltaic Model via a Reduced-Space Search

The behavior of a photovoltaic (PV) module may be captured via its current-voltage (I-V) characteristic. The single-diode model is able to adequately fit this characteristic while featuring limited parameterization difficulty, and is thus widely adopted to represent the performance of a PV module. However, the identification of the model's parameters is a complex task due to the nonconvex nature of the underlying optimization problem. In this paper, an efficient method for the parameter extraction of the single-diode PV model from experimental I-V curves is developed. This method features two advantages with respect to the existing procedures. On the one hand, it is able to find high-quality solutions at a reduced computational complexity. On the other hand, it does not rely on any preliminary data selection and it can thus be fully automated without user intervention. Numerical results obtained for case studies common in the literature and a large-scale repository show its performance. A computer program implementing the proposed methodology is available upon request via an e-mail to all interested researchers.