A Low-Cost System for Solar Cell Current-Voltage Characterization

In this paper we present the design, prototype development, and experimental results of a low-cost ARM microcontroller based current-voltage measurement system for solar cell characterization. The instrumentation system uses a supercapacitor as the load. As the supercapacitor undergoes the charging phase, the system traces the current-voltage (I-V) and power-voltage (P-V) curves by fast sampling of the supercapacitor voltage and current. The system can be built for less than 100 USD using off-the-shelf parts. It is capable of characterizing a solar cell in less than 10 seconds and can be easily scaled to test high-power photovoltaic (PV) modules.