A new explicit I-V model of a silicon solar cell based on Chebyshev Polynomials

In this paper, a new explicit current-voltage (I-V) modeling method based on Chebyshev Polynomials for silicon solar cells is proposed. Firstly, according to the given precision, Chebyshev Polynomials are used to express the exponential function of I-V characteristic equation and then an explicit analytical description of current is obtained. Secondly, the two new five-parameter models, named the basic Chebyshev model and the modified Chebyshev model, are proposed to obtain the values of the solar cell parameters only by using the manufacturer's datasheet. Finally, to validate the proposed method in this paper, silicon photovoltaic (PV) modules with the different technology types are used to test I-V characteristic and maximum power point at different operating conditions. The advantage of the proposed method over other explicit modeling methods is that Chebyshev Polynomials for different PV modules have different expression according to the given accuracy and the electrical parameters at SRC provided by manufacturer, to realize the optimal approximation for any PV modules. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.