Abstract: Energy from the sun is the best option for electricity generation as it is abundantly available everywhere and sustainable source. Advance of Photovoltaic (PV) technology in recent years has made solar energy one of the practical alternative energy sources available in the energy market. In order to make the PV energy more affordable and cost effective, major focus of the research community and industry is improvement on power efficiency of PV systems. Parameter extraction of solar cell plays a crucial role in the simulation and design calculation of PV system. The circuit model of a solar cell is non-linear and transcendental. Different methods under the categories of analytic, iterative, and evolutionary computational have been proposed to extract the parameters of solar cell in recent years. This paper presents a survey on parameter extraction of solar cell model and its recent advances.

Keyword: Solar cell models, parameter extraction, analytical methods, iterative methods, evolutionary methods, optimization.