Sunlight based I-V characterization of solar PV cells

Author

Jeevandoss, C.R. ; Kumaravel, M. ; Kumar, Varadarajan Jagadeesh

Author_Institution

Central Electron. Centre, IIT Madras, Chennai, India

fYear

2011

fDate

10-12 May 2011

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

A family of current as a function of voltage (I-V) curves under different illumination conditions as specified in standards are needed to characterize a photovoltaic (PV) cell. Instead of using an artificial light as the source, a method of using sunlight through fiber optic cables is described to obtain the I-V characteristics of a PV cell. Moreover, an electronic load realized with a MOSFET as a variable resistor, in conjunction with microcontroller based instrumentation automates the testing process. A prototype I-V curve tracer, developed and tested, establish the efficacy of the proposed method.

Keywords

MOSFET; microcontrollers; optical cables; solar cells; sunlight; MOSFET; artificial light; fiber optic cable; microcontroller based instrumentation; photovoltaic cell; solar PV Cell; sunlight; voltage curve; Light sources; Lighting; MOSFET circuits; Neodymium; Optical fiber cables; Optical fibers; Photovoltaic cells; Electronic load; I-V characteristics; MOSFET as load; P-V characteristics; Polymer optical fiber; Solar photovoltaic cells;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC), 2011 IEEE

Conference_Location

Binjiang

ISSN

1091-5281

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-7933-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IMTC.2011.5944061

Filename

5944061