A novel equivalent circuit-based model for photovoltaic sources

This paper presents a novel circuit-based model of photovoltaic (PV) source (cell, module or array) that can be easily integrated into any circuit-oriented simulators such as PSpice, PSCAD/ EMTDC, PSIM, PowerSys of MATLAB/Simulink, etc. This proposed model is able to simulate accurately any commercial PV module behavior either exposed to uniform or non-uniform irradiance distributions. Moreover, it can also simulate perfectly PV arrays behavior in large scale PV systems. It is mainly derived from the conventional one-diode equivalent circuit model, which consists of a current source, a diode and two resistors. By modifying the linear part of this latter and including implicitly the effect of weather parameters (irradiance and cell temperature) on the circuit elements, our proposed model will encompass two types of dependent sources (voltage and current sources) and two resistances. To validate the truthfulness of the proposed novel model, comparisons between simulated and outdoor measured I-V characteristics on commercial PV module are done. Preliminary results have shown promising outputs and accuracy of this model.