An Innovative Technique for Energy Assessment of a Highly Efficient Photovoltaic Module

For a photovoltaic (PV) generator, knowledge of the parameters describing its equivalent circuit is fundamental to deeply study and simulate its operation in any weather conditions. In the lit-erature, many papers propose methods to determine these parameters starting from experi-ments. In the most common circuit, there are five of these parameters, and they generally refer to specific weather conditions. Moreover, the dependence on irradiance and temperature is not investigated for the entire set of parameters. In fact, a few papers present some equations de-scribing the dependence of each parameter on weather conditions, but some of their coefficients are unknown. As a consequence, this information cannot be used to predict the PV energy in any individual weather condition. This work proposes an innovative technique to assess the gener-ated energy by PV modules starting from the knowledge of their equivalent parameters. The model is applied to a highly efficient PV generator with all-back contact, monocrystalline silicon technology, and rated power of 370 W. The effectiveness of the model is investigated by com-paring its energy prediction with the value estimated by the most common model in the litera-ture to assess PV energy. Generated energy is predicted by assuming PV power to be constant for a time interval of 1 min.