Evaluation of Analytical Methods for Parameter Extraction of PV modules

A review and evaluation of the main analytical techniques for parameters extraction of photovoltaic (PV) modules with due account taken of their applications in modelling photovoltaic systems is presented. Six prevalent analytical methods are investigated and assessed using software tools, which have been developed to extract the required parameters of some commercially available PV modules using these methods. The results were subsequently compared with those obtained using well-established numerical methods. It is shown that, despite the fact that analytical methods can involve a fair amount of approximations, some analytical methods can compete in terms of accuracy with their numerical counterparts with much reduced computational complexity.