Characterization and Digital Modeling of Solar Panels

With the modern demand for increased renewable energy, characterizing and understanding the performance of solar panels is becoming increasingly important. To characterize and understand solar panels, resistance sweeps can be used to calculate the power output and efficiency of a specific solar panel. From the output statistics, it is possible to create correlations to the theoretical power output given any lighting condition and panel size. Within this body of research, four types of solar panels were used to develop the correlations: two polycrystalline, one monocrystalline and one amorphous. Among these panel types, twenty-seven individual specimens were tested for their power response using ten different lighting conditions, varying the light intensity and wavelength cast on the panel. To complete the data analysis, modular scripting and automated data collection automatically cycled through and performed the power calculations for each lighting condition. All of the analysis was then compared to the power performance of a full sized outdoor solar panel, to which the data collected correlated with.