Nonstationary Effects at Photovoltaic Module Characterization Using Pulsed Solar Simulator

This paper presents the dynamic characteristic of a tandem silicon/amorphous silicon (a-Si:H/a-Si:H) photovoltaic (PV) module measured in the nonstationary regime. The current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of the PV module are generally measured by using a pulsed solar simulator. Distortions of the I-V curves can often be observed when measurements are done under the solar simulator with different pulse durations or different sweeping rates of the curve tracing, a direction of the curve tracing from short circuit to open circuit (SCOC), or from open circuit to short circuit (OCSC). In this paper, the measurements were made on the a-Si:H/a-Si:H tandem PV module consisting of 40 cells in series connection. The PV module area is 0.78 m(2). Dissimilarities of the I-V curves of the PV modules can be observed by the deviation of power at maximum point (P-m) and fill factor (FF). From the experimental results, it is found that the largest deviation of P-m is 6.12% for 1 ms sweeping duration with OCSC direction of the curve tracing. Dissimilarities of the I-V curves can be explained by charging and discharging capacitive currents due to a voltage dependence of solar cell parameters. Moreover, the capacitance effects can be described by a dynamic impedance measurement of the PV module in the dark with forward and reverse biasing. The voltage and time-dependent parameters are the diffusion capacitance (C-D), transient or junction capacitance (C-T), series resistance (R-s), and shunt resistance (R-sh),which can be revealed by an impedance plot.