Highly Accurate and Inexpensive Computational Tool for Improving Photovoltaic Arrays Performance and Efficiency Measures

Abstract

This work shows the results of a computational tool that allows to simulate the behavior of arrays of photovoltaic cells, under the physical model of two diodes. To reach this, the I-V curves by experimental way have been obtained, in order to know relevant parameters of the array: open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current, maximum voltage and current. These four parameters will be the input data in SCILAB, which solves the non-linear equations under the selected model, and from there, the coefficients of the equations that describes the behavior I-V of the photovoltaic array under test were obtained. A highly precise and inexpensive computational tool has been implemented to evaluate the efficiency of the array for any values of solar irradiance and temperature.