The effect of thermal inertia in photovoltaic module simulation

Performance of photovoltaic systems greatly depends on climate conditions. Apart from values of solar radiation and ambient air temperature, highly varying radiation can also have an influence on energy yield from a PV-system. In less favourable climate conditions (e.g. in central Europe), highly varying radiation is very frequent and the accurate energy yield predictions from PV-systems require introducing thermal inertia into photovoltaic module thermal models. The presented paper demonstrates the simulation of the simple RC-thermal model of photovoltaic module. Long time period data from measurements of field-installed PV-system is utilized in module temperature calculations.