A new six-parameter model for solar cell parameters based on padé approximants

Abstract

This paper proposes a six-parameter modeling method to represent parameters of solar cells. The traditional five-parameter model ignores the influence of temperature on series resistance and gives an accurate current-voltage (I - V ) characteristic expression only for mono-crystalline and poly-crystalline silicon solar cells. In this paper, padé approximants is used to express the relationship between series resistance and temperature and thus a new parameter, named temperature coefficient for series resistance, is introduced. The six-parameter modeling method can give a more reasonable description of series resistance about temperature and then provides a more accurate I-V characteristic estimation for silicon solar cells with different technology types, i. e., mono-crystalline, poly-crystalline, thin film, and triple-junction amorphous. Four types of silicon modules with different technology are tested at different solar irradiance and temperature conditions to validate the method proposed in this paper. Experiment results show the proposed six-parameter model is a simple, accurate and effective modeling method for solar cell parameters.