I. Introduction
Human beings, since times immemorial have used external sources of energy to do useful work and thus have made their environment more comfortable. Unfortunately, most of these external energy sources are non-renewable resources and they are going to exhaust themselves within years to come. The extraction and use of these resources, namely coal, petroleum and natural gas have caused unpleasant effects on the environment. They also lead to an evident outcome known as the energy crisis. So the need for renewable energy resources is increasing day by day. Various types of these include Solar Energy, Wind Energy etc. Solar Energy is free, continuous in supply and pollution free. This has thus opened a wide spread interest in the experimentation and research on the field of Solar Photovoltaics. Solar cell is the fundamental unit of PV array which is the electrical power generation element of any PV based distributed generation (DG) system. To perform various power conversion studies[1] (e.g. Load Flow Studies) before integrating the DG with the Grid, prior knowledge of the generation side is imperative. In order to obtain the knowledge required detailed analysis of the electrical parameters (e.g. voltage and current) under varying environmental conditions which significantly affect the performance of the PV array, is essential. A solar PV cell thus needs to be examined closely which is the main objective here. This paper deals with the physics behind the working of a solar photovoltaic cell and the mathematical modelling of the same in MATLAB/SIMULINK. Section II of this paper describes the basic working principle of Solar PV cell. Section III deals with the electrical equivalent circuit construction of a Solar PV Cell. Section IV consists of mathematical modelling of the PV Cell and verification of theoretical equations. The conclusion deals with the comparative analysis of the characteristic curves of the solar cell under varying irradiance and ambient temperature levels and the application of solar cell models in research work.