Performance analysis of solar cell arrays loaded with passive loads

The dynamic behaviour of the linear first-order passive circuit is of considerable importance to engineers. However, dynamic responses of these circuits when powered with solar cell arrays have not received much attention. Further to this, to date, no closed-form solution was reported for the transient response of these circuits due to difficulties arising from the complicated traditional model of the external characteristic of solar cell arrays. To overcome this difficulty, in this paper, a new model is proposed for external characteristic of solar cell arrays. The closed-form transient response of R-L and R-C circuits obtained from this model are compared with their counterparts obtained from the traditional model by using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta numerical method and very close agreement is obtained between the two sets of results. Also a closed-form solution is provided for direct estimation of the maximum power point voltage and current.