RESEARCH ARTICLE | JANUARY 14 2020

Performance prediction of PV modules based on artificial

neural network and explicit analytical model
Chen Zhang; Yunpeng Zhang  ; Jialei Su; ... et. al

Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy 12, 013501 (2020)

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5131432

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 Journal of Renewable ARTICLES scitation.org/journal/rse
and Sustainable Energy

Performance prediction of PV modules

based on artificial neural network and explicit
analytical model
Cite as: J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 12, 013501 (2020); doi: 10.1063/1.5131432
Submitted: 12 October 2019 . Accepted: 13 December 2019 .
Published Online: 14 January 2020

Chen Zhang, Yunpeng Zhang,a) Jialei Su, Tingkun Gu, and Ming Yang

Downloaded from http://pubs.aip.org/aip/jrse/article-pdf/doi/10.1063/1.5131432/16083471/013501_1_online.pdf

AFFILIATIONS
School of Electrical Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, China

a)
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: zhangyp@sdu.edu.cn

ABSTRACT
The accurate characterization and prediction of current-voltage characteristics of photovoltaic (PV) modules under different operating con-
ditions is essential for solar power forecasting and ensuring grid stability. The traditional method based on the single-diode model is inconve-
nient and complex because the current-voltage equation is implicit. In this paper, a novel method combining an artificial neural network
(ANN) with an explicit analytical model (EAM) is proposed for predicting the I-V characteristics of PV modules under different operating
conditions. The EAM makes it efficient to obtain the I-V curves from the estimated model parameters due to its simplicity and explicit
expression. The ANN based on the EAM is composed of a three-layer feedforward neural network, in which the inputs are solar irradiation
and module temperature and the outputs are the four parameters in EAM. Once the ANN is built and trained by using the measured I-V
curves, the shape parameters and I-V curve are predicted by only reading solar irradiation and temperature without solving any nonlinear
implicit equations. The accuracy and capability of the proposed method are verified by the experimental data for different types of PV mod-
ules. Moreover, the dependence of shape parameters in the EAM on solar irradiation and temperature is investigated first.
Published under license by AIP Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5131432

NOMENCLATURE R2 Performance indicator

ref Subscript that is under the reference condition
E Natural constant
RMSE Root mean squared error
f ðSj Þ Activation function
T Module temperature
FF Fill factor
Tc Cell temperature
G Solar irradiation
v Normalized voltage
i Normalized current
V Output voltage of PV modules
I Output current of PV modules
Vm Maximum power point voltage
Im Maximum power point current
Voc Open circuit voltage
Iph Photocurrent
Vt Thermal voltage
Isc Short circuit current
wij Weight on the connection from the ith input layer neu-
I0 Reverse saturation current
ron to the jth hidden layer neuron
k Boltzmann’s constant
xi Entrance vector
m Shape parameter
h Bias of each layer
Ns Number of cells in series
c Shape parameter
NRMSE Normalized root mean squared error
g Ideality factor
Pm Maximum power of PV modules
q Electronic charge
R Performance indicator I. INTRODUCTION
Rs Series resistance The photovoltaic (PV) power is becoming increasingly important
Rsh Shunt resistance with wide acceptance and integration of solar energy in modern

J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 12, 013501 (2020); doi: 10.1063/1.5131432 12, 013501-1
Published under license by AIP Publishing
 Journal of Renewable
and Sustainable Energy
electric grids. Along with the rapid growth of PV application, charac-
terization and performance prediction of PV modules have become an
essential topic of research. The ability to precisely forecast the electrical
energy produced by PV systems is of great importance and has been
identified as one of the key challenges for massive PV integration. As
the performance of outdoor PV systems is significantly influenced by
weather conditions such as solar irradiance and temperature, accurate
prediction methods of photovoltaic cells/modules are required to ana-
lyze the dependence of electrical characteristics on solar irradiance and
temperature.
Many methods have been proposed to characterize and predict
the I-V properties of PV modules under different operating conditions
based on equivalent circuit models of PV modules, including the
single-diode model (SDM) (Chenni et al., 2007; De Soto et al., 2006;
Jain and Kapoor, 2004; Khezzar et al., 2009; Tian et al., 2012; Zhou
et al., 2007) and double-diode model (DDM) (Barth et al., 2016; Chan
and Phang, 1987; Cibira, 2018; Lun et al., 2015; Yahya-Khotbehsara
and Shahhoseini, 2018). The SDM is the most widely used model
because it combines simplicity and sufficient accuracy. In the SDM,
there are five physical parameters to characterize the I-V properties of
PV modules, which are the photocurrent (Iph ), reverse saturation cur-
rent (I0 ), ideality factor (gI ), series resistance (Rs ), and shunt resistance
(Rsh ). Five parameters were evaluated to predict the output behaviors
of PV modules under different weather conditions in De-Soto’s
method (De Soto et al., 2006). The Lambert-W function was used in
Jain and Kapoor’s method (Jain and Kapoor, 2004) to extract the ana-
lytical solutions of the parameters. Moreover, further methods have
been developed based on them. A cell-to-module-to-array detailed
method for photovoltaic panels based on the five-parameter method
in the study by De-Soto et al. was presented (Tian et al., 2012), in
which the derivation of the modified current-voltage relationships
begins with a single solar cell and is expanded to a PV module and an
array. Methods for solving the parameters of SDM were developed by
assuming that the contribution of parallel resistance Rsh has little influ-
ence in the single-diode method (Chenni et al., 2007; Khezzar et al.,
2009). A novel method was proposed to predict the PV module perfor-
mance by using the Fill Factor (FF) to solve the maximum power
(Zhou et al., 2007), which is simple and useful for engineers to calcu-
late the actual performances of the PV modules under operating con-
ditions, with limited data provided by the PV module manufacturers.
However, since the I-V relationship between the SDM and DDM is
implicit, it requires the use of Lambert-W functions or iterative opera-
tions to calculate the I-V performance, which increases the complexity
and computing cost (Franco and Vieira, 2018; Laudani et al., 2014a;
Laudani et al., 2014b; Phang et al., 1984; Sera et al., 2008).
To overcome the inherent implicitly of the electrical equivalent
circuit model, an explicit and analytical power-law I-V model was pro-
posed to characterize the I-V properties of PV modules and systems
(Karmalkar and Haneefa, 2008). In the explicit analytical model
(EAM), four parameters are used to characterize the I-V curve, open-
circuit voltage Voc , short-circuit current Isc , and two shape parameters
c and m. c represents the flatness of the I-V curve near the short-
circuit current point, and m represents the steepness of the I-V curve
near the open-circuit voltage point. Taking into account the intrinsic
I-V properties of PV modules, the EAM simplifies the determination
of the I-V curve, fill factor, and peak power point from a few measure-
ments as well as physical parameters in the SDM or DDM. It was
J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 12, 013501 (2020); doi: 10.1063/1.5131432
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ARTICLES scitation.org/journal/rse
proven that the EAM is useful for characterizing I-V curves of a variety
of solar cells having different conduction phenomena (Karmalkar and
Haneefa, 2008). The relationship between the parameters in the SDM
and those in the EAM was studied, the extraction method of five phys-
ical parameters using the EAM was given (Saleem and Karmalkar,
2009), and an analytical derivation of this four-parameter model from
a physical-based implicit I-V equation was demonstrated (Das and
Karmalkar, 2011). A thorough validation of this EAM was presented
(Karmalkar and Saleem, 2011). Additionally, a semiempirical
approach considered to determine the peak power voltage for any illu-
minated solar cell based on this model was proposed (Das, 2012). A
method was proposed to predict the I-V characteristics of a PV panel
by combining the SDM and the EAM (Zhang et al., 2017). The EAM
has been validated to be more suitable for different types of PV mod-
ules with different physical phenomena. In these studies, the EAM is
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used for design, characterization, and parameter extraction of PV cells
and modules under a certain condition. However, little work has been
done on modeling or estimating PV performance under different
operating conditions based on the EAM. Moreover, the I-V curves
vary with the changing operating conditions, which results in the vari-
ance of parameters in the EAM. The dependence of Voc and Isc on
operating conditions has been investigated in the literature (Singer
et al., 1984). Due to the lack of physical meaning, the dependence of
the shape parameters c and m on operating weather conditions has
not been investigated yet.
The artificial neural network (ANN) techniques have been
becoming extremely useful as alternate approaches to the conventional
method recently, as it solves complex problems without requiring spe-
cific knowledge and physical parameters. For photovoltaics, the ANN
has been mostly used in characterizing the PV system to predict the I-
V properties, as well as to track the maximum power (Mellit and
Kalogirou, 2008). A comparative study shows that the ANN methods
perform better in power prediction than some conventional methods
such as polynomial regression, multiple linear regression, and
analytical methods (Mellit et al., 2013). Nevertheless, predicting the
whole I-V curves of PV modules under different conditions is more
informative and valuable than only predicting the output power. An
ANN method was proposed to generate I-V curves of silicon-
crystalline and Copper Indium Diselenide (CIS) PV modules precisely
for any irradiance and module temperature (Almonacid et al., 2009;
Almonacid et al., 2010), in which the inputs were irradiance and tem-
perature and the output was the I-V curves. A generalized regression
neural network was used to predict the operation current of the photo-
voltaic module with a good prediction precision, in which the inputs
were irradiance, temperature, and voltage, while the output was the
corresponding current (Celik, 2011). Radial basis function neural net-
works were utilized to predict the output current accurately of a com-
mercial PV module, by only reading the data of solar irradiation and
voltage (Bonanno et al., 2012). However, the characterization of the I-
V curves under different conditions given by the methods mentioned
above were complex in the ANN structure and computation-
consuming as the I-V curves obtained directly occupy more computer
resources. A much simpler method was proposed by using an artificial
neural network to predict the equivalent circuit parameters of the
SDM by reading the samples of solar irradiance and temperature and
then using the SDM to calculate the whole I-V curves (Karatepe et al.,
2006). In the previous work, it is needed to solve the implicity equation
12, 013501-2
 Journal of Renewable
and Sustainable Energy
in SDM based ANN methods, which is inconvenient for rapid predic-
tion of I-V properties under different operating conditions.
The aim of this research is to develop a novel ANN method,
combined with the EAM, for predicting the output performance of PV
modules under outdoor operating conditions in virtue of the simple
and fast calculation of the EAM as well as the accuracy of ANN pre-
diction. The measured experimental data of different types of PV
modules under different operating conditions are used to validate the
proposed method. The dependence of shape parameters c and m on
module temperature and solar irradiance is investigated first by the
proposed method.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Sec. II, the EAM
and the SDM are reviewed. In Sec. III, the configuration of the ANN
based on the EAM is elaborated. Section IV shows the performance of
the proposed method for different types of PV modules. Finally, in
Sec. V, the relationship between the parameters of the EAM and oper-
ating conditions is obtained and discussed. In the last part, conclusions
are drawn.
II. SDM AND EAM
Photovoltaic modules can be traditionally demonstrated by the
SDM (Duffie and Beckman, 2013), which consists of an ideal current
source, a diode in parallel, a shunt resistance, and a series resistance.
The current voltage relationship of a PV module is expressed as follows:
   
V þ IRs V þ IRs
I ¼ Iph  I0 exp 1  ; (1)
Ns g Vt Rsh
where Iph is the photocurrent, I0 is the reverse saturation current, g is
the ideality factor, Rs is the series resistance, Rsh is the shunt resistance,
Ns is the number of cells in series, and Vt represents the thermal volt-
age. Vt is given by
kTc
Vt ¼ ; (2)
q
where k is Boltzmann’s constant (k ¼ 1.38 006 1023 J=K), q is the elec-
tronic charge (q ¼ 1.60 218 1019 C), and Tc is the cell temperature.
Since Eq. (1) is implicit in mathematics, it is not convenient for
parameter extraction or I-V property estimation.
Karmalkar and Haneefa proposed an EAM to characterize the I-
V property of PV modules (Karmalkar and Haneefa, 2008), which
uses only four parameters c; m; Isc ; and Voc to represent the I-V char-
acteristics of photovoltaic cells. This model is expressed as follows:
i ¼ 1  ð1  cÞv  cvm ;
where i ¼ I=Isc and v ¼ V=Voc indicate the normalized current and
voltage, respectively. Isc is the short circuit current, and Voc is the open
circuit voltage. Shape parameter c captures the slow decrease in cur-
rent with voltage near the short-current point. Shape parameter m
captures the rapid decrease in current near the open-voltage point.
In the EAM of PV modules, the maximum power point current
Im and voltage Vm can be calculated (Karmalkar and Haneefa, 2008),
8  
>
> 1=m
> V
< m ¼ V oc ðm þ 1Þ 0:05 ð1  c Þ
  !
>  Vm Vm m
>
> Im ¼ Isc 1  1  cref c :
: Voc Voc
J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 12, 013501 (2020); doi: 10.1063/1.5131432
Published under license by AIP Publishing
ARTICLES scitation.org/journal/rse
The fill factor “FF” is represented as
m
FF ¼ vm im ¼ vm ½1  ð1  mÞvm  vm : (5)
It can be clearly seen from the formulas listed above that the
EAM is much simpler to characterize I-V curves than the SDM as it
has only four parameters and do not have to use Lambert-W functions
to make the current-voltage relationship explicit, which could curtail
calculation complexity drastically.
III. THE ANN BASED ON THE EAM FOR PV MODULES
Due to its capability of arbitrary input-output mapping, the mul-
tilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network is the most widely used type
of supervised neural network for approximation tasks and forecasting
(Hornik et al., 1989). The known data including input vectors and the
corresponding target vectors are used to train a network until it can
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approximate a mapping function and associate input vectors with spe-
cific output vectors. Reasonable answers would be given when pre-
sented with inputs that they have not seen, after the backpropagation
network has been trained properly.
Under the premise of meeting the predicting requirements, the
smallest neural network is considered for both better practical and the-
oretical reasons. Moreover, a smaller network usually requires less
computation in each iteration during the training phase and can avoid
the appearance of overfitting when solving prediction problems. Since
a valid formula to determine the number of layers or neurons that is
suitable for the different situations has not been found, the structures
of multilayer perceptron networks are mainly determined by experi-
ence (Reed, 1993). The number of hidden layer neurons within each
layer usually varies depending on the complexity and nature of the
datasheet.
In order to map the relationship between parameters in the EAM
and the solar irradiance and temperature, the neural network begins
with a small network and gradually adds neurons or connections as
needed up to an appropriate neural network size. Finally, sufficient
results and output layer are shown in Fig. 1. The input layer has 2 neu-
rons, the hidden layer has 20 neurons, and the output layer has 4 neu-
rons. The entrance vector xi ¼ (x1, x2) is two-dimensional, where x1 is
the solar irradiance and x2 is the module temperature. The network
input of the jth hidden neuron is
(3)
(4)
FIG. 1. Architecture of the proposed neural network.
12, 013501-3
 Journal of Renewable ARTICLES scitation.org/journal/rse
and Sustainable Energy

X
2
S1j ¼ wij xi  h1j ; (6)
i¼1

where the factor j indicates the number of hidden layer neurons, wij is
the weight on the connection from the ith input layer neuron to jth
hidden layer neuron, and h1j for j ¼ 1, 2, … and 20 represent the bias.
A hyperbolic tangent sigmoid transfer function was used as the
activation function of the hidden layer in the proposed method,
f1 ðSj Þ ¼ tansig ðSj Þ ¼ 2=ð1  e2Sj Þ  1: (7)
The small size of four-output network in this paper is helpful to
reduce the computational effort. This is especially of great importance
in the testing phase of the network where fast response is required.
The training process of the ANN method mentioned above is
simulated in the MATLAB Neural Network Toolbox, and the back-

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propagation algorithm function, which is suitable for simple networks,
is selected as “trainbr.” By training the network with a training set rep-
resentative enough, the relationships between inputs and outputs will
be obtained by the neural network.
The basic flow path of the proposed method for PV property
prediction is summarized in Fig. 2, which consists of three main pro-
cesses. The first process is using the recorded I-V curves and weather
conditions to calculate the four parameters (c, m, Voc , and Isc ) of each
condition for training the established neural network, and the second
process is to input unknown weather conditions to the well-trained
ANN and get the corresponding four parameters. Finally, the pre-
dicted I-V curves are obtained and therefore electrical power, by virtue
of the power-law EAM.
The root mean squared error (RMSE) and the normalized root
mean squared error (NRMSE) between the predicted and the mea-
sured I-V curves were used to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed
method. In addition, the coefficient of determination R2 was employed
in this study to measure how well the method follows the variation in
collected data. R is used to assess the agreement between the predicted
value and measured power.
These indicators have been used in publications as a statistical
tool to evaluate the performance of power or current predictions. FIG. 2. The basic flow path of the proposed ANN prediction method.
RMSE and NRMSE are defined as follows:
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
u d X
d
u1 X ðPi  Pi;m ÞðPpi  Pi;m Þ
RMSE ¼ t ðIi  Ipi Þ2 ; (8)
d i¼1 i¼1
R ¼ vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ; (11)
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi u d
u d uX X d
u1 X t ðPi  Pi;m Þ 2
ðPpi  Ppi;m Þ
2
t ðIi  Ipi Þ2 i¼1 i¼1
d i¼1
NRMSE ¼ ; (9) where Pi and Ppi are P the ith measured power
Isc Pand predicted power,
respectively; Pi;m ¼ d1 di¼1 Pi and Ppi;m ¼ d1 di¼1 Ppi are the arith-
where Ipi is the predicted value of current, Ii is the experimental mea- metic mean of the measured and predicted power, respectively.
sured data, Isc is the recorded short circuit current, and d is the total
number of measured points. IV. APPLICATION OF THE PROPOSED METHOD ON
R2 and R are defined as follows: EXPERIMENTAL DATA
X
d Outdoor measured I-V data of different types of PV modules are
ðPi  Ppi Þ2 used to validate the proposed method. The data were recorded by the
i¼1
R2 ¼ 1  ; (10) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), where the flat-plate
X
d
2 PV modules are installed in Cocoa, Florida; Eugene, Oregon; and
ðPi  Pi;m Þ
i¼1 Golden, Colorado, including the current-voltage curves of different

J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 12, 013501 (2020); doi: 10.1063/1.5131432 12, 013501-4
Published under license by AIP Publishing
 Journal of Renewable
and Sustainable Energy
PV modules associated with meteorological data (Marion et al., 2014).
To ensure the accuracy, the data were recorded within every fifteen
minutes from sunrise to sunset, for approximately one-year period.
The recorded solar irradiances were greater than 20 W/m2 and lower
than 1500 W/m2 , while the recorded module temperatures were
between 34  C and 75  C. The PV module back surface temperature
uncertainty is 1.9  C, and the average irradiance uncertainties for the
four PV modules are mentioned below 3.4704% (mSi), 3.225% (xSi),
3.1802% (copper indium gallium selenide module, CIGS), and
2.9755% (aSiTandem). Quality Assessment (QA) methods were
implemented to exclude data not meeting quality thresholds. The QA
methods are based on those previously established to provide
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 17025 accredited
data for PV modules installed on the PERT at NREL. They include
checks for the reasonableness of the I-V curves, irradiances, PV mod-
ule temperatures, and meteorological data.
Four different types of PV modules including multicrystalline
silicon module (mSi), single-crystalline silicon module (xSi), copper
indium gallium selenide module (CIGS), and amorphous silicon tan-
dem junction module (aSiTandem) are used to verify the extensive
applicability of the proposed method. Table I shows the specifications
of these four PV modules. All values are measured at Standard Test
Conditions (STC), 1000 W/m2, 25  C, AM1.5, provided by the
manufacturer.
For each module, 200 measured I-V curves under different oper-
ating conditions are used to train the neural network by employing the
proposed method. Each I-V curve consists of 180–190 measured pairs
of data recorded to the fourth decimal place. Both solar irradiance and
temperature of the training I-V data cover the whole range of operat-
ing conditions, which were measured using a Kipp and Zonen CMP
22 pyranometer and Omega Model CO1-T Style I Thermocouple,
respectively. The output expectations of the training data were
obtained as follows: Voc and Isc were obtained from the measured
directly, while shape parameters m and c were obtained by a nonlinear
data-fitting method based on Eq. (3). An optimization toolbox named
“lsqnonlin” in MATLAB, which utilizes the principle of least squares
fitting to minimize the mean square error between the function and
data, is chosen to extract the parameters m and c. The computing tasks
were implemented utilizing MATLAB in a computer with an Inter(R)
Core (TM) i5–6500 @3.60 GHz CPU processor, 8 GB RAM and
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit operating system.
Experimental data of mSi, xSi, CIGS, and aSiTandem PV mod-
ules were used to validate the proposed method. For each PV module,
after inputting solar irradiance and module temperature to the
TABLE I. Specification of four NREL PV modules.
Series cells
Parallel cells
Module area (m2 Þ
Short circuit current (Isc) (A)
Open circuit voltage (Voc) (V)
Operating current at maximum power (Im) (A)
Operating voltage at maximum power (Vm) (V)
J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 12, 013501 (2020); doi: 10.1063/1.5131432
Published under license by AIP Publishing
ARTICLES scitation.org/journal/rse
well-trained ANN, I-V curves and maximum power points under dif-
ferent operating conditions are obtained using Eqs. (3) and (4) by the
proposed method. The RMSE, NRMSE, R2, and R are calculated for
each PV module to better assess the proposed method.
A. Results for mSi and xSi PV modules
The results for mSi and xSi PV modules are shown in Fig. 3,
where the solid lines represent the I-V curves predicted by the pro-
posed method under different operating conditions shown in Table II,
and the measured I-V data are plotted in Fig. 3 by dots. For compari-
son, the ones predicted by De-Soto’s method (De Soto et al., 2006) are
shown as dashed lines. De-Soto’s method is a conventional analytical
method usually used for single/multicrystalline PV modules.
The range of the irradiance under different operating conditions in
Table II is from 224.6 W/m2 to 1137.8 W/m2 and 230.3 W/m2 to
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1053.6 W/m2 , for mSi and xSi PV modules, respectively, which
involves typical irradiance operating conditions for PV modules.
It can be seen that there is a good agreement between the two
predicted and measured I-V results, while the results predicted by the
proposed method show a much better agreement with the measured
data at all conditions. The results indicate the prominent applicability
of the proposed method within a wide range of operating conditions,
which is also proved by the error analysis results listed in Table III.
The predicted and measured maximum power and RMSE of the
whole I-V curves are shown in Table III. The maximum RMSE values
calculated by De-Soto’s method are 0.1178A and 0.2513A for mSi and
xSi, respectively. The maximum values of RMSE under different con-
ditions calculated by the proposed method for mSi and xSi are
0.0143A and 0.0729A, respectively, which are much smaller than the
former. The relative errors between the prediction maximum power
calculated by the proposed method and the measured maximum
power are less than 1.6% for the two PV modules under five different
conditions, while the maximum relative errors between De-Soto’s pre-
diction results and the measured reach 12.27% at most.
The predicted and measured peak powers of mSi and xSi PV
modules on a day are shown in Fig. 4, where the red lines represent
the prediction result of the proposed method, the blue lines represent
the prediction of De-Soto’s method, and the measured data are the
black dots. The results predicted by the two methods have a good
agreement with the measured peak power during the day for the two
types of PV modules, while the prediction line of the proposed method
is closer to the actual power especially at lower output power when the
solar irradiance is low. The results show that the proposed method has
mSi xSi CIGS aSiTandem
36 36 72 38
1 1 1 1
0.3429 0.647 1.75 0.79
2.65 994 4.975 6.06 558 1.10 594
22.0341 21.9851 41.6701 59.9138
2.44 501 4.43 791 4.74 149 0.887 437
17.9879 17.3352 29.3889 44.5723
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FIG. 3. Current vs voltage for mSi and xSi PV modules predicted by the proposed method (solid lines), De-Soto’s method (dashed lines), and measured data (dots) at five
operating conditions. (a) mSi and (b) xSi.

TABLE II. Operating conditions for mSi and xSi PV modules.

mSi xSi

Conditions Irradiance (W/m2 ) Temperature (K) Irradiance (W/m2 ) Temperature (K)

C1 1048.6 323.15 1053.6 331.55

C2 827.5 310.25 863.0 326.85
C3 664.6 309.35 662.6 317.95
C4 414.7 304.35 420.0 306.85
C5 224.6 308.05 230.3 307.05

TABLE III. RMSE and maximum power computed by the proposed method and De-Soto’s method for mSi and xSi PV modules.

RMSE (A) Maximum Power Point Pm ( W )

Module Condition Proposed method De-Soto’s method Measured Proposed method Error (%) De-Soto’s method Error (%)

mSi C1 0.0148 0.0871 47.44 46.94 1.047 46.33 2.36

C2 0.0068 0.0481 35.42 35.34 0.212 35.26 0.36
C3 0.0053 0.0170 27.95 28.00 0.166 28.43 1.81
C4 0.0083 0.0410 17.67 17.78 0.626 18.04 2.18
C5 0.0065 0.0511 8.281 8.491 0.307 9.428 12.27
xSi C1 0.0729 0.2513 70.86 69.93 1.316 68.95 2.73
C2 0.0288 0.2047 60.09 59.15 1.571 58.61 2.51
C3 0.0165 0.0864 47.77 47.31 0.952 47.14 1.33
C4 0.0158 0.0665 30.35 30.49 0.458 31.92 4.95
C5 0.0034 0.0432 17.20 17.19 0.015 17.32 0.82

better applicability and accuracy than De-Soto’s method in predicting
the I-V characteristics and power peak under different operating
conditions.
The performance indicators R2 and R in the proposed method
and De-Soto’s method for the two silicon-based PV modules are listed
in Table IV, which are calculated based on the I-V curves recorded on
a day in Fig. 4. The values of R2 and R for the proposed method for
mSi and xSi are from 0.9983 to 0.9998 and from 0.9994 to 0.9999,
respectively, which are higher than those in the literature (Ma et al.,
2014) as well as than the value predicted by De-Soto’s method, which

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 Journal of Renewable
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FIG. 4. Peak power predicted by the proposed method (red line) and De-Soto’s method (blue line) for mSi and xSi PV modules and measured power (black dots). (a) mSi on
7th Oct. 2011, Cocoa, USA and (b) xSi on 1st Sep. 2012, Golden, USA.
are from 0.9952 to 0.9979 and from 0.9986 to 0.9995, respectively. The
higher value of R2 and R for the two PV modules indicates that the
proposed method has better performance in the prediction of the I-V
characteristics and output power than De-Soto’s method.
B. Results for CIGS and aSiTandem PV modules
The prediction results of the proposed method for CIGS and
aSiTandem PV modules are obtained and shown in this section with-
out comparison with the result from De-Soto’s method. The reason is
that the physical parameters at the reference condition, obtained by
De-Soto’s method, are negative without physical meaning.
The predicted results under different operating conditions for
CIGS and aSiTandem PV modules are shown in Fig. 5. The details of
operating conditions are listed in Table V. The range of the irradiance
under different operating conditions in Table V is from 218.2 W/m2
to 1090.6 W/m2 and 218.0 W/m2 to 1002.4 W/m2 for CIGS and
aSiTandem PV modules, respectively. It can be seen that the predicted
I-V curves show good consistency with the measured data, and the
specific data are provided in Table VI for analysis. In Table VI, the
maximum values of RMSE for CIGS and aSiTandem are 0.0474A and
0.0093A, respectively, and the errors of maximum power for CIGS
and aSiTandem are less than 1%, except for condition 5 with lower
solar irradiation. Because of the low ratio of data under low solar irra-
diation in the training data, the errors between the predicted and mea-
sured power peak increase in the low solar irradiation region.
TABLE IV. Performance statistics of the proposed method and De-Soto’s method on predicted power for xSi and mSi PV modules.
R2 (% )
Module Proposed method De-Soto’s method
mSi 99.98 99.79
xSi 99.83 99.52
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The predicted and measured maximum powers of CIGS and
aSiTandem PV modules on a day are shown in Fig. 6, where the red
solid line depicts the prediction result of the proposed method and
black dots are the measured peak power. It is clear that the predicted
peak power has good agreement with the measured data, which indi-
cates a high accuracy of the proposed method in a wide range of oper-
ating conditions.
The performance indicators R2 and R in the proposed method
for CIGS and aSiTandem PV modules are shown in Table VII. The
values of R2 and R calculated by the proposed method for the two
types of PV modules are both 0.9993 and 0.9998, respectively, which
are close to the value of one. The value of R2 and R for CIGS and
aSiTandem shows that the proposed method is also accurate in the
prediction of the I-V characteristics and output power for CIGS and
aSiTandem PV modules, which are not able to be modeled and pre-
dicted by De-Soto’s method.
The average training times for the four PV modules are shown in
Table VIII. The numbers of I-V curves calculated in the training phase
are 190 (mSi), 193(xSi), 202 (CIGS), and 196 (aSiTandem), respec-
tively. The increased RAM are 106 MB (mSi), 113MB (xSi), 120MB
(CIGS), and 118MB (aSiTandem), respectively.
The average computing times of the proposed method for the
four PV modules under each operating condition are also listed in
Table VIII, as well as the average computing time of De-Soto’s method
for mSi and xSi PV modules. As inputting the solar irradiance and
module temperature of each operating condition, the average
R (% )
Proposed method De-Soto’s method
99.99 99.95
99.94 99.86
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FIG. 5. Current vs voltage for CIGS and aSiTandem PV modules predicted by the proposed method (solid lines) and measured data (dots) at five operating conditions. (a)
CIGS and (b) aSiTendem.

TABLE V. Operating conditions for CIGS and aSiTandem PV modules.

CIGS aSiTandem

Conditions Irradiance (W/m2 ) Temperature (K) Irradiance (W/m2 ) Temperature (K)

C1 1090.6 319.85 1002.4 316.45

C2 801.8 314.25 802.7 316.25
C3 596.3 309.85 598.0 311.15
C4 413.1 303.75 413.5 304.25
C5 218.2 303.05 218.0 304.25

TABLE VI. RMSE and maximum power computed by the proposed method and measured data for CIGS and aSiTandem PV modules.

Maximum Power Point Pm (W)

Module Condition RMSE (A) Measured Proposed method Error (%)

CIGS C1 0.0474 142.2 141.5 0.214

C2 0.0383 109.1 109.1 0.014
C3 0.0320 81.17 81.05 0.146
C4 0.0461 55.17 54.76 0.743
C5 0.0234 22.85 23.73 3.872
aSiTandem C1 0.0079 39.90 39.93 0.072
C2 0.0093 31.90 31.74 0.482
C3 0.0046 24.15 24.13 0.589
C4 0.0054 17.41 17.29 0.706
C5 0.0015 8.717 9.013 3.398

computing times of the proposed method for each I-V curve are less
than 0.01 s.
The average computing times of De-Soto’s method for mSi and
xSi are 0.6511 s and 0.6756 s, respectively, which are much higher
than the sets of times of the proposed method. The possible reason for
the higher calculation speed of the proposed method is it takes advan-
tage of the EAM that contains less parameters and does not have to
use the Lambert-W function or iterative calculations.
The uncertainty analysis of the proposed method is investigated
using NRMSE and massive measured data for the four PV modules,

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FIG. 6. Peak power predicted by the proposed method (red lines) for CIGS and aSiTandem PV modules and measured power (black dots). (a) CIGS on 7th Oct. 2011, Cocoa,
USA and (b) aSiTandem on 1st Sep. 2012, Golden, USA.

shown as Fig. 7. The numbers of I-V curves used for calculating
NRMSE are 36165 (mSi), 11929 (xSi), 34775 (CIGS), and 39186
(aSiTandem). The mean of NRMSE calculated by the proposed
method and measured data for mSi, xSi, CIGS, and aSiTandem are
2.44%, 2.40%, 1.99%, and 0.60%, respectively. It is obvious that the
maximum NRMSE for all the four PV modules is lower than 8.1%,
while the one for aSiTandem is generally lower (less than 2%) and
more concentrated, indicating that the proposed method is more accu-
rate implementing for this module.
V. DEPENDENCE OF PARAMETERS ON IRRADIATION
AND TEMPERATURE
In this section, the dependence of parameters in the EAM on
irradiation and temperature is discussed. The irradiation and tempera-
ture dependence of Voc and Isc has been discussed in the literature
(Singer et al., 1984) and given by
G parameters Rsh , Rs , and g in SDM (Das and Karmalkar, 2011).
Isc ¼ Isc;ref 1 þ kI ðT  Tref Þ ;
Gref
Voc ¼ Voc;ref ln e þ kðG  Gref Þ ½1 þ kU ðT  Tref Þ;
where G and T represent the solar radiance and cell temperature and
k, kU , and kI are constants that can be obtained directly from the
manufacturer and represent the relative irradiation coefficient of
open-circuit voltage [V/(W/m2 )], the relative temperature coefficient
of open-circuit voltage (V/K), and the relative temperature coefficient
of short-circuit current (A/K), respectively.
The dependence of shape parameters c and m on irradiation and
temperature has not been reported. Since the shape parameters c and
m lack physical meaning, it is difficult to get the analytical relationship
between shape parameters and operating conditions. Using the pro-
posed method, shape parameters at different solar irradiation and tem-
peratures are obtained and investigated. The actual values of Voc and
Isc were obtained from the measured I-V curves directly, and the shape
parameters c and m are obtained by fitting the measured I-V curve
with Eq. (3) using the lsqnonlin instruction in MATLAB. In the pro-
cess of curve fitting, the calculation precision is set as 1  106 to
ensure the reliability of the calculated results. For comparison, the
dependence of the four parameters on irradiance and temperature is
also descripted analytically, using Eqs. (12) and (13) for Voc and Isc and
using the relationship between shape parameters c and m and physical
(12)
(13)
TABLE VIII. Average training time for each PV module and computing time of two
methods.
Average computing time
for each I-V curve (s)

TABLE VII. Performance statistics of the proposed method for CIGS and aSiTandem Average training Proposed De-Soto’s
PV modules. Module time (s) method method

mSi 17 0.0056 0.6511

Module R2 (%) R (%)
xSi 18 0.0072 0.6756
CIGS 99.93 99.98 CIGS 19 0.0096 …
aSiTandem 99.93 99.98 aSiTandem 19 0.0098 …

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value of m decreases with increasing irradiation for xSi and

aSiTandem. For mSi and CIGS, the value of m increases in the low
irradiation region and decreases in the high irradiation region with
increasing irradiance. The peaks of m vs irradiation are at around 450
and 300 W/m2 for mSi and CIGS, respectively. In the most irradiation
region, the value of m decreases in the order of mSi, xSi, aSiTandem,
and CIGS. The trend is in agreement with the I-V characteristics in
Fig. 3 for each PV module because the shape parameter m represents
the rapid decrease in current near the open-voltage point. For all the
four PV modules, the parameter m decreases lineally with increasing
solar irradiance, when the irradiance is above 400 W/m2 .
The dependence of parameter c on irradiance is shown in
Fig. 8(b). Since the shape parameter c represents the decrease in cur-
rent with voltage near the short-current point, the value of c is below 1
and the variation range is relatively small in general. The value of c

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increases slightly with increasing irradiance for mSi, xSi, and
aSiTandem. The value of c is between 1 and 0.95 for mSi and xSi and
around 0.9 for aSiTandem. However, the value of c increases signifi-
cantly from 0.64 to 0.86 upon increasing irradiation from 200 to
1000 W/m2 for CIGS, which is according to the obvious decrease in
current near the short-current point in I-V curves. In general, the
FIG. 7. Boxplots of NRMSE calculated by the proposed method and massive mea- parameter c varies in a small range, but the variation tendency and
sured data for the four PV modules.
range are different among different types of PV modules. For mSi, xSi,
and aSitandem PV modules, c varies lineally within a small range,
The relationships between the shape parameters of the explicit
while c varies relatively in a drastic and unilineal way for CIGS PV
model and the physical parameters of the SDM are given by (Saleem
modules.
and Karmalkar, 2009)
Figures 8(c) and 8(d) show the irradiation dependence of Voc and
 
Voc Isc , respectively. The open circuit voltage Voc increases slowly with
c¼1 ; (14) increasing solar irradiance. As the irradiation is increased from 200 to
Isc Rsh
1000 W/m2, the change of Voc is 1.83 V (9.82%), 1.56 V (8.23%), 6.3 V
Voc =Ns gVt (18.84%), and 4.67 V (9.14%) for mSi, xSi, CIGS and aSiTandem,
m¼  : (15)
Rs respectively. This is in accord with Eq. (13), in which the relative irra-
1 þ hc Isc
Ns gVt diation coefficient of open-circuit voltage k is reported to be small and
negligible (Singer et al., 1984). The short circuit Isc increases nearly lin-
The relationship between physical parameters Rsh , Rs , and g on
early with increasing irradiation. This is because the short circuit cur-
irradiance and module temperature has been reported in the literature
rent Isc is approximately equal to the photogenerated current Iph and it
(Bashahu and Nkundabakura, 2007; De Soto et al., 2006; Schroder,
increases almost proportionally with irradiation in the SDM.
1998) as shown in the following equations:
It can be seen in Fig.8 that the analytical results of m decrease lin-
eally with the increasing irradiance for all PV modules. For xSi, there
Gref is acceptable agreement between the actual value and analytical results
Rsh ¼ Rsh;ref ; (16)
G at higher irradiance, while a larger deviation exists at lower irradiance.
Rs ¼ Rs;ref ; (17) For mSi, CIGS, and aSiTandem, there are larger gaps between the
g ¼ gref ; (18) actual value and analytical results although the trends are all lineally
descend. The value of c calculated by the analytical method remains
where the subscript “ref” indicates the value of parameters at the refer- almost constant with the increasing irradiance. They are close to the
ence condition. actual values for mSi, xSi, aSitandem PV modules and deviate a lot
from the actual value of the CIGS module. The results of Voc and Isc
A. The dependence of parameters on irradiation calculated by the analytical method using Eqs. (12) and (13) are close
The dependence of shape parameters on solar irradiance for dif- to the actual value apart from the relationship between Voc and irradi-
ferent types of PV modules is shown in Fig. 8. The solid lines represent ance for the CIGS module, where a larger deviation exists at lower irra-
the results calculated by the proposed method, the dashed lines repre- diance. It indicates that Eqs. (12) and (13) are acceptable tools for
sent the results calculated by the analytical method, and the dots repre- calculating Voc and Isc under varying solar irradiance.
sent the actual value. In order to study the dependence of parameters
on irradiance, data measured at a certain temperature around B. The dependence of parameters on temperature
T ¼ 320.05 K are selected for each PV module. The relationship between parameters and module temperature
In Fig. 8(a), the dependence of shape parameter m on irradiation for different types of modules is shown in Fig. 9. The solid lines repre-
shows different characteristics for different types of PV modules. The sent the results calculated by the proposed method, the dashed lines

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 Journal of Renewable
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FIG. 8. Parameters vs solar irradiance for 4 types of PV modules predicted by the proposed method (solid lines),analytical method (dashed lines), and actual values (dots) cal-
culated by the measured data at around T ¼ 320.05 K. (a) m, (b) c, (c) Voc, and (d) Isc.
represent the results calculated by the analytical method, and the dots
represent the actual value. For each PV module, the relationship
between parameters and temperature is shown at G ¼ 800 W/m2 .
In Fig. 9, with increasing module temperature, the value of
parameter m decreases lineally for mSi, xSi, and CIGS, while increases
lineally slightly for aSiTandem. The value of m decreases in the order
of mSi, xSi, aSiTandem, and CIGS under certain irradiation.
The parameter c varies lineally with increasing module tempera-
ture. For mSi and xSi, the values of c are near 1 with small variation,
while the value of c varies around 0.9 with relatively large variation.
This indicates the absolute value of the slope on the I-V curve around
Isc for mSi and xSi modules are lower than CIGS and aSiTandem.
Compared to parameter m, the variation of c with changing tempera-
ture could be negligible because of the small range of variation.
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Figure 9(c) shows how the open circuit voltage of different PV
modules changes with the module temperature. For the four PV mod-
ules, the dependences of Voc on solar irradiance and module tempera-
ture are similar where the open circuit voltage ascends slightly with
the increase in solar irradiance and decline linearly with the increase
in module temperature. Figure 9(d) shows that the short circuit cur-
rent of different PV modules almost remains constant with increasing
module temperature. The value of Isc decreases slightly for the consid-
ered PV modules except xSi where its value increases with the increase
in module temperature.
The value of m calculated by the analytical method decreases
with the increasing temperature for the four PV modules, which agrees
with the results of mSi, xSi, and CIGS. While the actual value of m for
aSiTandem increases with the increase in temperature, there is a large
12, 013501-11
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FIG. 9. Parameters vs temperature for 4 types of PV modules predicted by the proposed method (solid lines), analytical method (dashed lines), and actual values (dots) calcu-
lated by measured data at G ¼ 800 W=m2 . (a) m, (b) c, (c) Voc, and (d) Isc.
deviation from the actual value for CIGS. The value of c calculated by
the analytical method increases slightly with the increasing tempera-
ture and is close to the actual value for mSi, xSi, and aSiTandem except
for CIGS. Besides, as shown in Figs. 9(c) and 9(d), the analytical
method using Eqs. (12) and (13) could capture the relationship
between Voc , Isc , and temperature in an acceptable accuracy.
To sum up, it can be seen in Figs. 8 and 9 that the proposed
method has a better agreement with the measurements than the ana-
lytical method for the four PV modules, indicating a higher accuracy
and a wider range of applications for the proposed method.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a novel method combining the ANN with the
EAM is proposed for estimating the I-V characteristics of PV modules
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under different operating conditions. The proposed method consists
of a three-layer feedforward neural network, in which the inputs are
solar irradiation and module temperature and the outputs are the four
parameters in the EAM. Once the neural network is trained by using
the measured I-V curves, the four parameters of the EAM and the cor-
responding I-V characteristics are estimated by only reading solar irra-
diation and temperature without solving any nonlinear implicit
equations. The proposed method is verified by the experimental data
for four different types of PV modules, indicating the wider range of
applications of the proposed method for I-V prediction of different
types of PV modules. The results show a good agreement between the
estimated and actual I-V curves under different operating conditions,
as well as higher calculation speed of the proposed method. Using the
proposed method, the dependence of parameters in the EAM on solar
12, 013501-12
 Journal of Renewable
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irradiation and temperature is also obtained and discussed. The
dependence of Voc and Isc on operating weather conditions accords
with the results in the literature. The dependence of shape parameters
c and m on operating weather conditions is investigated for the first
time. A good agreement between the estimated and actual values of
parameters validates the accuracy of the proposed method under dif-
ferent operating conditions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank NREL and especially Mr. Bill Marion
for providing the experimental data.
This work was supported by the National Key Research and
Development Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFB0904200).
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