Model construction of single crystalline photovoltaic panels for real-time simulation

Real-time simulation and fast prototyping with power electronics, critical loads, and control systems have prompted recent interest in accurate electrical terminal models of photovoltaic (PV) panels and array systems. Advancement in computing technologies have allowed the prototyping of novel apparatus to be investigated in a virtual system under wide range of realistic conditions repeatedly, safely, and economically. This paper accesses numerical iteration methods, selects appropriate techniques, and combines them with model construction methods well suited for boosting the computation speed of an electrothermal dynamic model of a PV panel. Significant improvements resulting from the proposed modeling approach in computation time and numerical convergence speed are verified using experimental results published for the target PV panel and Opal RT's RT-Lab Matlab/Simulink based real-time engineering simulator. © 2010 IEEE.