Parameter extraction of solar photovoltaic modules using penalty-based differential evolution

► Penalty based differential evolution (P-DE) for extracting the parameters of solar modules. ► Proposed P-DE outperforms the other Evolutionary Algorithm methods. ► Performance of each method is evaluated using the well known quality test and student T-tests. ► P-DE based extraction method is practically validated by six solar modules of different types. ► Proposed work can be used to develop accurate PV system simulator.