Modeling and simulation of PV arrays under varying conditions

The penetration of renewable energy technologies into energy markets is on the increase due to significant drops in their capital cost, increase in their efficiency and improvement in storage system and power electronic interface. Most universities around the globe offer, nowadays, renewable energy courses within the electrical and mechanical engineering curricula to support the increasing demand for renewable energy engineers. This paper presents a teaching approach for modeling and simulating PV cells and systems taking into consideration the effects of temperature, irradiance, series and parallel connections of modules and shading. Equations are derived using basic electric circuit laws and MATLAB code is provided to aid students and engineers better understand PV operational characteristics through simulation.