Solar irradiance and cell temperature are the most significant aspects when assessing the production of a photovoltaic system. To avoid the need of specific sensors for quantifying such parameters, recent literature presents methods to estimate them through electrical measurements, using the photovoltaic module itself as a sensor. This work presents an application of such methods to data recorded using a research platform at University of Corsica, in France. The methods and the platform are briefly presented and the results are shown and discussed in terms of normalized mean absolute errors (nMAE) and root mean square errors (nRMSE) for various irradiance and cell temperature levels. The nMAE (and nRMSE) for solar irradiance are respectively between 3.5% and 3.9% (4.2% and 4.7%). Such errors on computed irradiance are in the same order of magnitude as those found in the literature, with a simple implementation. For cell temperatures estimation, the nMAE and nRMSE were found to be in the range 3.4%–8.2% and 4.3%–10.7%. These results show that using such methods could provide an estimation for the values of irradiance and cell temperature, even if the modules are not new and are not regularly cleaned, but of course not partially shaded.

Modeling photovoltaic modules using the single-diode model presents an adequate balance between complexity and accuracy; however, the current–voltage characteristic has to be calculated every time the operating condition changes. In turn, IEC-60891 provides procedures for direct translation from one operating condition to another, allowing a more straightforward application, provided that specific parameters are known. That international standard describes a procedure to quantify such parameters; however, their calculation requires complex equipment or extensive experimental tests. This article presents an alternative and simplified method to compute the parameters of IEC-60891, specifically the second procedure presented in the standard. It requires a reduced amount of measurements to be used as references. The validation of the method has been carried out taking extensive experimental data as reference, considering thousands of measurements taken for 16 months. The application of the proposed method to translate the reference curves presented mean absolute error and root-mean-square error below 3%, considering two different photovoltaic modules.

The use of renewable energy sources, and in particular photovoltaics, can effectively reduce the supply of household energy from the main grid, contributing to a more sustainable community. In this paper, several energy management strategies were applied to an existing microgrid with photovoltaic (PV) production and battery storage in view to supply in electricity a building and an electric vehicle located in Ajaccio, France. The purpose was to determine how the choice of a management strategy can impact the cost and the energy share in the microgrid, using the actual electricity tariff in France as well as an over-cost due to the island situation. For some strategies, a forecasting tool was introduced and its influence on the performances of the microgrid was discussed. It appears that the performance of the strategy increased with its complexity and the use of PV forecasting.