Multilayer perceptron applied to the estimation of the influence of the solar spectral distribution on thin-film photovoltaic modules

In this paper, we propose the use of a methodology to characterise the electrical parameters of several thin-film photovoltaic module technologies. This methodology allows us to use not only solar irradiance and module temperature as classical models do, but also spectral distribution of solar radiation. The methodology is based on the use of neural network models. From all measured I-V curves of a module, a previous selection of them has been used in order to train the neural network model. This selection is performed using a Kohonen self-organising map fed with spectral data. This spectral information has been added as an input to the neural network itself. The results show that the incorporation of spectral measurements to simulate thin-film modules improves significantly both the fitting of the predicted I-V curve to the measured one and the peak power point estimation. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.