Experimental investigation and modeling of the thermal behavior of a solar PV module

Photovoltaic (PV) cell/module/array temperature calculations are essential to accurately assess its electrical performance. In this paper, we developed and validated two new models, and then we focused on the comparison of ten theoretical models (including our models) with experimental measurements, based on the ambient temperature, the in-plane array irradiance with/without taking into account the wind speed. These models were used to determine the PV module temperature of a 7.2 kWp standalone photovoltaic power plant installed in Elkaria village (Province of Essaouira, Morocco). The results show that our model without wind yields the highest value of the correlation coefficient R2=96.7% and the lowest value of the root mean square error RMSE=1.6 °C among the models without wind. On the other hand, our model with wind gives the best statistical coefficients (R2=98.8% and RMSE=1.1 °C) compared to all models (with/without wind).