Measurement of the Current-Voltage Curve of Photovoltaic Cells Based on a DAQ and Python

Abstract

The renewable energy has grown extensively in the last decades. The photovoltaic panels have been playing a significant role in the technologies used to produce this kind of energy. This tendency is expected to continue in the future, because the cost of the solar panels has been gradually reduced. Systems providing information of the performance of the solar cells can be helpful for technicians and researchers. In this paper a system to measure the I-V curves of photovoltaic cells is presented. This is composed by a data acquisition board (DAQ) and a personal computer (PC). The program to control the DAQ is written in Python. With this system a polycrystalline silicon solar cell was tested under low irradiance conditions (less than 100 W/m2) with an artificial light source. The repeatability of the I-V curves obtained has less than 5 % error.