Journal of Cleaner Production 269 (2020) 122363

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Short communication

A simple iterative method to determine the electrical parameters of

photovoltaic cell
Y. Chaibi a, *, A. Allouhi b, M. Salhi c
a
Moroccan School of Engineering Sciences (EMSI), Rabat, Morocco
b
Ecole Sup
erieure de Technologie de F
es, U.S.M.B.A, Route d’Imouzzer, BP 2427 Fez, Morocco
c
2EMI team, ENSAM, Moulay Ismail University, 50500, B.P 15290 El Mansour, Meknes, Morocco

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper aims to determine the unknown electrical parameters of photovoltaic modules. The proposed
Received 16 March 2020 technique adopts an iterative process of the shunt resistance with numerical computing to find other
Received in revised form parameters of the five parameters model. This numerical operation is based on solving determined
7 May 2020
equations from datasheet manufacturer at standard test conditions (STC). The criteria to extract the
Accepted 17 May 2020
Available online 29 May 2020
anonymous parameters is to achieve the lowest value of error between datasheet and simulated powers
at the maximum power point (MPP). To highlight the performances of this method, three photovoltaic
Handling editor: Panos Seferlis panels of different technologies are used. Namely, Monocrystalline (Mono-Si), polycrystalline (Poly-Si)
and thin-film PV module. In fact, the current-voltage (IeV) characteristics provided by manufacturers
Keywords: and literature-based techniques are compared to the simulated ones using the determined parameters.
Modeling of photovoltaic cell Also, a comparative study between the proposed method and the chosen techniques is conducted. The
Equivalent-circuit configuration obtained results demonstrate a good agreement between simulated and datasheet curves for various
One-diode model levels of solar irradiance and temperature with the highest value of error which not exceed 4.38%. Also,
Parameters extraction process
the proposed method provides a good compromise between simplicity and efficiency compared to the
Iterative method
literature-based techniques.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction employed configurations due to its good balance between effi-

Switching towards a more sustainable energy sector requires a
high penetration level of renewable energy sources (A Allouhi,
2019a). In fact, these latter provide significant opportunities to
face the ever-increasing energetic and environmental challenges
(Allouhi, 2019b). More specifically, photovoltaic systems represent
a key solution to cover electrical needs in a cost-effectively way
while preserving the environment (Choudhary and Srivastava,
2019; Hazra et al., 2017). The electrical modeling of PV modules is
quite important to predict and analyze the performances of PV
systems before their real implementation (Allouhi et al., 2019). For
this reason, many researchers and computation tools adopted the
use of equivalent-circuit configurations in order to mimic the
electrical performances of PV panels (Chaibi et al., 2019b).
Generally, the single-diode model (SDM) is one of the most
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: chaibi.yassine@gmail.com, y.chaibi@edu.umi.ac.ma (Y. Chaibi),
allouhiamine@gmail.com (A. Allouhi), salhi.ensam@yahoo.fr (M. Salhi).
ciency and complexity. These latter are related to the selected
strategy/process to extract the unknown parameters. Namely,
photo-generated current (Iph), diode saturation current (Ios), diode
ideality factor (n), series and shunt resistances (Rs and Rsh).
Therefore, the determination of these parameters has been dis-
cussed widely in the literature using analytical and numerical
techniques (Abbassi et al., 2018). Also, evolutionary algorithms
have been utilized recently by reason of its high accuracy, but the
complexity of these techniques remains the main problem (Chen
et al., 2019; Yousri et al., 2019; Yu et al., 2017).
As a result of their simplicity, direct analytical and numerical
methods are commonly used to determine the unknown parame-
ters, especially for equivalent-circuit models with reduced param-
eters. However, for models with full parameters such as single and
double-diode, an iterative process is substantial. In the literature,
several authors adopted the iterative solution to achieve the
parameter values. In (De Blas et al., 2002), authors iterate (Rs) and
(Rsh) value until finding a good convergence to compute other
parameters. This technique requires initial values of (Rs) and (Rsh)
using datasheet slopes of (Voc) and (Isc). The performances are

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.122363
0959-6526/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 Y. Chaibi et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 269 (2020) 122363

verified experimentally using a Mono-Si module and presented

good agreement (De Blas et al., 2002). In the same way, Sera et al. G
Iph ¼ ½Isc þ Ki ðT  298:15Þ (2)
adopted initial values of (Rs), (Rsh) and (n) with an iterative algo- 1000
rithm to calculate other parameters. The simulated results are
where, (Ki) is the temperature coefficient related to the short-
compared with IeV datasheet of the Poly-Si PV panel and shown a
circuit current (Isc).
better correlation with datasheet curves (Sera et al., 2007). Other-
On the other hand, the diode saturation current calculation re-
wise, Villalva et al. assigned a random value of the ideality factor
quires the knowledge of both the reverse saturation current (Ior)
parameter and iterated (Rs) with (Rsh) until matching the simulated
and the diode ideality factor. Afterward, the direct saturation cur-
power with the experimental one at STC (Villalva et al., 2009). Most
rent value could be computed concerning the temperature changes
of the reported methods demand initial values with an iterative
using the following expression (Chaibi et al., 2019a; Walker, 2001):
process of Rs and Rsh which increases the computation time and
decreases the accuracy.  3   
T qEG0 1 1
Since the shunt resistance has a direct effect on (Rs), (n) and (Ios) Ios ¼ Ior exp  (3)
values, this paper exhibits a simple and efficient method to extract
298:15 nk T 298:15
the PV cell parameters including an iterative process for only the
where, (EG0) is the bandgap.
shunt resistance. The other parameters are deduced by making use
of only datasheet based equations. The condition of reaching the
correct value of Rsh is the good agreement between simulated with 2.2.1. Proposed method
datasheet generated powers. The validity of this method is proved The unknown parameters are respectively Rs, Rsh, n and Ior. In
by comparing the simulated IeV characteristics with datasheet and order to find these parameters, an iterative process for the shunt
literature IeV curves for three PV modules of different technolo- resistance is introduced. The proposed method is described in Fig. 2
gies, namely, Mono-Si SM55, Poly-Si KC200GT, and thin-film ST40 a minimal (Rsh_min) and a maximal (Rsh_max) value of the shunt
PV panel. Likewise, the simplicity and efficiency of this method are resistance are selected according to the used technology. Therefore,
highlighted by a comparison with other iterative techniques from the choice of the Rsh boundaries is identified based on reported
the literature. intervals in the literature (Abbassi et al., 2018; Jordehi, 2016; Pillai
and Rajasekar, 2018). For each iteration on Rsh, the calculation of

2. Method

2.1. Single-diode model

As shown in Fig. 1, the single-diode configuration is constituted

of a current source in parallel with a diode, series and parallel re-
sistances. The output current of this model is expressed by the
mathematical equation (Motahhir et al., 2018; Rauschenbach,
1980):
n h q io V þ R I
s
I ¼ Iph  Ios exp ðV þ IRs Þ  1  (1)
nkT Rsh

where, (I) and (V) are respectively, the produced current and
voltage by the PV cell/module, (q) and (k) are the electron charge
and Boltzmann constant.
To examine and analyze the electrical behavior of photovoltaic
modules, both (I) and (V) must be known. For this, the unknown
parameters (Iph, n, Ios, Rs, and Rsh) must be determined.

2.2. Parameters extraction method

As reported in precedent sections, parameter determination is

based on the accurate calculation of each one. The photo-generated
current can be calculated using Eq. (2). Its value depends totally on
irradiance (G) and temperature (T) variations (Villalva et al., 2009):

Fig. 1. One-diode equivalent-circuit configuration. Fig. 2. Proposed method to compute the PV cell unknown parameters.
 Y. Chaibi et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 269 (2020) 122363 3

Table 1
Provided parameters by the manufacturer of the PV panels at STC. vP vI
¼I þ V ¼0 (7)
SM55 KC200GT ST40 vV vV
Type of cells Mono-Si Poly-Si Thin-Film Then, this current can be represented as follows:
Pm [W] 55 200 40  h q i
Vm [V] 21.7 26.3 16.6 q
Im [A] 3.15 7.61 2.41 I ¼ ðV  Rs IÞ Ios exp ðV þ Rs IÞ þ 1=R (8)
nkT nkT sh
Voc [V] 21.7 32.9 23.3
Isc [A] 3.45 8.21 2.68 For each Rsh, the calculated values of the optimal power are
Ki [A/K] 0.0014 0.0031 0.0003
compared to the extracted ones from the datasheet at STC, this
Ncell 36 54 36
comparison is achieved by assessing the relative errors.

3. Results
Table 2
Computed parameters using the proposed iterative technique at STC.
To prove the validity of the proposed method, three PV modules
Rsh [U] Rs [U] n Ios [A] are considered. These PV panels are respectively, the mono-Si
Mono-Si 936 0.1602 1.64 2.12e-06 SM55, the poly-Si KC200GT and the thin film ST40. The electrical
Poly-Si 358 0.2555 1.22 3.26e-08 parameters of these modules at STC are summarized in Table 1.
Thin Film 460 1.4936 1.38 3.35e-08 Using only datasheet values and an iterative process of the shunt
resistance, the proposed method is applied for each PV module
separately. The founded parameters are summarized in Table 2. It is
other parameters is achieved using datasheet based equations (Eqs. worth mentioning that the intervals of the shunt resistance are
(4)e(6)) at standard test conditions (Chaibi et al., 2018). fsolve selected based on previous works of parameter determination for
function of MATLAB software is used to resolve these equations: each PV panel technology.
The computed parameters in Table 2 are adopted to plot the
current-voltage characteristics for each technology. Then, these
Isc  VocRR s Isc
simulated curves are compared with extracted ones from the
  sh
 
q
exp nkT Voc  exp nkT q
Isc Rs manufacturer datasheet and provided curves by iterative methods
from the literature under uniform changes of irradiance and
Im  Voc VRmshRs Im temperature.
¼   h (4) Figs. 3e5 display a comparison between simulated and provided
q q
exp nkT Voc  exp nkT ðVm þ Rs Im Þ IeV curves by the manufacturer and other techniques from the
literature. These latter are namely, Villalva et al. (2009); El Achouby
et al. and Zaimi et al. methods (El Achouby et al., 2018; Zaimi et al.,
Im  Voc VRmshRs Im Im 1
Vm R s Im  R sh
2019). Note that, after extracting the parameters using El Achouby
  h ¼ h i et al. and Zaimi et al. techniques, it has been remarked that these
q q q q
exp nkT Voc  exp nkT ðVm þ R s Im Þ nkT exp nkT ðVm þ Rs Im Þ parameters are quite the same. For this reason, Zaimi et al. method
(5) is selected for the rest of the results. Furthermore, these techniques
offer good IeV characteristics for Mono-Si and Poly-Si technologies.
But, the determined parameters of the thin-film PV module provide
IeV curves with a large difference compared to datasheet ones, this
Isc  VocRR s Isc

Ior ¼   sh
  (6) explains that these methods are not applicable for the thin-film
q q
exp nkT Voc  exp nkT Isc R s technology.
As shown in Figs. 3e5, generated IeV curves using the proposed
Thereafter, the calculated parameters are employed to compute method fit very well with those provided by the manufacturer and
the power at its MPP using the following equations together with the literature-based technique. To assess the difference between
Eq. (1). the proposed method and other techniques, the maximum values
At the PV optimal operating: of relative errors between simulated and manufacturer

Fig. 3. Current-voltage curves of KC200GT PV module for: (a) uniform change of irradiances and fixed T at 25  C, (b) uniform change of temperatures and G at 1000 W/m2.
4 Y. Chaibi et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 269 (2020) 122363

Fig. 4. Current-Voltage curves of the SM55 PV module for: (a) uniform change of irradiances and fixed T at 25  C, (b) uniform change of temperatures and G at 1000 W/m2.

Fig. 5. Current-Voltage curves of the ST40 PV module for: (a) uniform change of irradiances and fixed T at 25  C, (b) uniform change of temperatures and G at 1000 W/m2.

Table 3 Table 5
Maximum values of relative errors between datasheet and the proposed method. Maximum values of relative errors between datasheet and El Achouby et al.; and
Zaimi et al. methods (El Achouby et al., 2018; Zaimi et al., 2019).
Irradiance varies, T ¼ 25  C Temperature varies,
G ¼ 1000 W/m2 Irradiance varies, T ¼ 25  C Temperature varies,
G ¼ 1000 W/m2
200 400 600 800 1000 20 40 60
200 400 600 800 1000 20 40 60
Mono-Si 2.38% 2.31% 2.02% 0.89% 1.41% 1.02% 0.78% 0.62%
Thin-film 4.38% 4.03% 4.19% 2.38% 2.19% 2.19% 1.24% 1.90% Mono-Si 3.38% 2.98% 2.72% 0.97% 1.53% 1.53% 1.95% 2.87%

200 400 600 800 1000 25 50 75 200 400 600 800 1000 25 50 75

Poly-Si 2.40% 0.98% 1.05% 2.13% 1.73% 1.44% 1.31% 2.39% Poly-Si 2.51% 1.02% 1.16% 2.33% 1.34% 0.65% 2.97% 3.94%

Table 4 characteristics are presented in Table 3. Also, the maximum value of

Maximum values of relative errors between datasheet and Villalva et al. method the relative errors between literature-based methods and manu-
(Villalva et al., 2009). facturer IeV curves are assessed in Table 4 and Table .5.
Irradiance varies, T ¼ 25  C Temperature varies, As reported in Fig. 3, and based on the relative error assessment,
G ¼ 1000 W/m2 the fitting between datasheet IeV curves and the proposed method
200 400 600 800 1000 20 40 60
for the Poly-Si technology does not exceed 2.40%, and this is for
very low-irradiances (G ¼ 200 W/m2) and very high temperatures
Mono-Si 4.19% 3.78% 3.56% 1.14% 1.43% 0.98% 1.56% 2.20%
(T ¼ 75  C). As well, Villalva’s and Zaimi’s IeV characteristics exhibit
Thin-film 4.67% 4.28% 4.25% 2.39% 2.21% 3.23% 2.10% 2.20%
low values of errors compared to the datasheet, and the proposed
200 400 600 800 1000 25 50 75 method outweighs other techniques for low-irradiances and high
Poly-Si 2.74% 1.54% 0.93% 2.03% 2.34% 0.89% 2.76% 2.67% temperatures.
Concerning the Mono-Si technology, the simulated IeV curves
in Fig. 4 coincide with the manufacturer characteristics and the
literature-based techniques for the chosen variations of solar irra-
diance and temperature. As observed in Table 3, the maximum
 Y. Chaibi et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 269 (2020) 122363
Table 6
Comparison between the proposed algorithm and other iterative methods in the literature.
Iterative methods Initial values
Villalva et al. (2009) Rs0, Rsh0, tol
El Achouby et al. (2018) Rs0, Rsh0, n0, Iph0, Ios0
Zaimi et al. (2019) Rs0, Rsh0, n0, Iph0, Ios0
Proposed method Rsh0
value of error is about 2.38%, and this is for irradiances around
200 W/m2. For other variations, the error value is very low. Besides,
in Table 4 the relative error between Villalva’s curves and manu-
facturer ones achieve a remarkable value for low-irradiance levels,
this later is up to 4.19%. Also, It is clear that the evolution of the
relative error in Table 5 is remarkable especially at the level of low-
irradiances and temperature greater than 60  C.
Concerning the thin-film module, Fig. 5 shows generated IeV
curves using the proposed method, manufacturers IeV data and
Villalva’s curves. As can be remarked, these curves agree well for
high-irradiance levels. However, for solar irradiances below 600 W/
m2, a slightly more deviation is observed. This latter is expressed by
an error that could reach 4.38% for the proposed method and up to
4.67% for Villalva’s technique.
To prove the simplicity of the proposed algorithm, a qualitative
comparison with the chosen methods is considered. In addition to
Villalva’s algorithm, our proposition is compared to El Achouby
et al. and Zaimi et al. methods (El Achouby et al., 2018; Zaimi et al.,
2019). Indeed, this investigation is performed in terms of the
adopted initials values for the extraction process, the computa-
tional complexity and the module technology adopted for the
validation section of each technique. In fact, the complexity is
related to the number of the used equation, the number of iterated
parameters in the algorithm and the mathematical formulation of
the adopted equations. The results of this study are summarized in
Table 6.
In terms of adopted initial parameters, it is clear that the pro-
posed algorithm outweighs other methods since it requires only
the definition of the shunt resistance initial values and no tolerance
of computing. Furthermore, most of the discussed techniques
involve the use of complex equations with different iteration pa-
rameters which complicates the calculation process. Although, the
proposed approach is based on simple expressions that decrease
the computational complexity and the parameters are extracted
rapidly. Besides, based on the comparison with datasheet values,
the proposed method performs accurately under different varia-
tions of temperature and irradiance. Thus, the prediction uncer-
tainty is low which presents its superiority compared to the other
methods that represent remarkable uncertainties.
4. Conclusion
This short communication introduces an iterative method to
determine the unknown electrical parameters of the one-diode
model. The iterative process concerns only the computation of
the shunt resistance while the rest of the parameters are obtained
through solving datasheet based equations. The convergence
criteria relies on the good matching between simulated and
manufacturer generated powers. For all examined PV technologies,
the relative errors between the results achieved with the present
technique and those reported by the manufacturer datasheet do
not exceed 4.38%. In addition, the proposed algorithm represents
superiority compared to other iterative methods in terms of
simplicity and accuracy. The finding of this investigation proves
that the proposed iterative technique has the potential to be used
for an accurate estimation of PV single-diode parameters while
5
Complexity Module technology
Medium Poly-Si
High Poly-Si, Mono-Si
High Poly-Si, Mono-Si
Low Poly-Si, Mono-Si, Thin-film
reducing the calculation time since only one parameter is subjected
to numerical iterations. As a perspective, one can consider applying
this method to other models such as the double-diode model.
Funding
This work was not had any grant a funding from any Organi-
zation or Institution.
Declaration of competing interest
All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Y. Chaibi: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation,
Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. A. Allouhi:
Conceptualization, Writing - review & editing. M. Salhi:
Supervision.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Pr. M. ASSAID and Dr. M. ZAIMI
for their help and support to improve this work.
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