Identification of unknown parameters of solar cell models: A comprehensive overview of available approaches

Solar energy is increasingly attracting the attention of industry and academia. This heightened focus is mainly motivated by the challenge to contribute to fossil fuels' alternative and to limit the pollution of environment caused by their emissions. The number of researches focusing on solar photovoltaics is continually increasing. The behavior of a photovoltaic (PV) cell/module may be deduced via its current-voltage (I-V) characteristic which depends on its circuit model parameters. Whilst, the extraction of appropriate circuit model DC parameters is crucial to carry out precise performance investigations and control studies on solar PV systems, it remains highly constrained nonlinear non-convex optimization problem. The main objective of this paper is to review the existing research works on PV cell model parameter estimation problem and to assess the performance of the newest approaches. Based on the conducted review of more than 100 methods published over the past 7 years, the recommendations provided for future research are an important goal that will improve the methods of research in this area. In addition, this article implements two real models (single-diode and double-diode) and examines their accuracy to draw the current-voltage (I- V) and power-voltage (P-V) characteristics.