Development software program for finding photovoltaic cell open-circuit voltage and fill factor based on the photovoltaic cell one-diode equivalent circuit model

Abstract

The photovoltaic (PV) cell is the smallest building block of the PV solar system and produces voltages between 0.5 and 0.7 V. It acts as a current source in the equivalent circuit. The amount of radiation hitting the cell determines how much current it produces. The equivalent circuit of an ideal PV cell consists of a diode and a parallel current source. In order to express losses in applications, series and parallel resistance are added to the ideal equivalent circuit of the PV cell. There are many equivalent circuits in the literature for modeling the equivalent circuit of a PV cell. The single-diode equivalent circuit is the most widely used model because of its simplicity and ease of analysis. There are several methods available to estimate and analyze the parameters of PV cell models, such as Newton Raphson method, Lambert-W function, etc. In this study, the Newton Raphson method was used to find the equivalent circuit parameters of a PV cell. Fill factor is used to determine the quality of electricity generated by the photovoltaic cell. Open-circuit voltage is the maximum voltage value that the PV cell can transmit. The analysis of PV cell fill factor and open-circuit voltage was carried out using the developed software program. Then, the open-circuit voltage and fill factor were found using the software program prepared in MATLAB and given in Appendix.