Comparative of IEC 60891 and Other Procedures for Temperature and Irradiance Corrections to Measured <i>I–V</i> Characteristics of Photovoltaic Devices

Abstract

The photovoltaic literature contains a wide range of methods for translating the I–V curves of a solar device to other conditions of irradiance and cell temperature, different from those under which the measurements were performed. Some of these translation methods are included as part of the International Standard IEC 60891. In this paper, these techniques are classified, reviewed, and implemented to perform a deep comparative analysis between them and to discuss their suitability for converting the I–V curves of photovoltaic modules under different scenarios of irradiance and temperature. From the analysis conducted, it can be seen that the interpolation method proposed in IEC 60891 achieves accurate results when it is applied to correct small and medium irradiance and temperature gaps. If no interpolation is possible and for large irradiance corrections, other procedures described in IEC 60891 can be applied. However, certain explicit methods based on the single-diode model or on the double-diode model can overcome the most well-known approaches proposed by the standard.

Keywords

• ASTM E 1036 standard
• IEC 60891 standard
• <i>I–V</i> curve correction
• <i>I–V</i> curve translation
• <i>I–V</i> curve interpolation
• outdoor measurements