Teaching fundamentals of photovoltaic array performance with simulation tools

Abstract

This paper presents a course module containing exercises based on simulation tools that can be used to efficiently educate Electrical and Electronic Engineering undergraduate students on the electrical behavior of solar cells and photovoltaic arrays. This module is taught as part of the "Alternative Energy Sources" course added to the curriculum of the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Educators Department of ASPETE in 2013. The concept is to offer our undergraduate students the opportunity to deeply understand the electrical behavior of solar cells and photovoltaics by virtually experimenting with individual solar cells and photovoltaic arrays creating their necessary models in the popular platform of MULTISIM (the simulator from National Instruments). This is important for the success of the learning process of this course, which is not accompanied with a real-world laboratory that would be expensive to implement.