Simple Approach to Model Photovoltaic Module using Solver Utility of Microsoft Excel

Photovoltaic (PV) modules are used to extract electrical energy from the solar energy efficiently. The relationship between the output voltage and current of a PV module being nonlinear, development of a proper model is a complex task. Due to very limited PV module models available in many simulation tools, studies that use such models are therefore constrained. This paper proposes a simple yet effective method to extract the parameters of the PV module by exploiting the solver utility of Microsoft's Excel. These extracted parameters are then used to construct the model. The correctness of the model is verified by carrying out simulation in the spice environment. The data points required to extract the parameters can be taken either from the datasheet or from the experiment. Use of a common and well-known tool like Excel makes the implementation of proposed method not only easy but also simple.