Nonlinear phenomenon in monocrystalline silicon based PV module for low power system: Lead acid battery for low energy storage

• For high illumination levels, ISCMod depends sublinearly.
• The open circuit voltage VOCMod for high illumination level is reduced.
• The battery voltage decreases with discharging time and discharging battery capacity.
• The battery voltage increases with the charging time.

In the present work, we report the indoor photo-electrical measurements of monocrystalline silicon based photovoltaic (PV) module associated with 4 Ah lead acid battery as a storage unit for low power PV system applications. Concerning the PV module, our measurements show, at low illumination regime, that the short circuit current ISC increases linearly with the illumination power levels. Moreover, for high illumination levels, the mechanism of bimolecular recombination and space charge limitation may be intensified and hence the short current of the PV module ISCMod depends sublinearly on the incident optical power; the behavior is nonlinear. For the open circuit voltage of the PV module VOCMod measurements, a linear variation of the VOCMod versus the short circuit current in semi-logarithmic scale has been noticed. The diode ideality factor n and diode saturation current Is have been investigated; the values of n and Is are approximately of 1.3 and 10−9 A, respectively. In addition, we have shown, for different discharging–charging currents rates (i.e. 0.35 A, 0.2 A and 0.04 A), that the battery voltage decreases with discharging time as well as discharging battery capacity, and on the other hand it increases with the charging time and will rise up until it maximized value. The initial result shows the possibility to use such lead acid battery for low power PV system, which is generally designed for the motorcycle battery.