The use of photovoltaic (PV) panels has increased rapidly in the last few years and as a result has become one of the main sources of renewable energy. In this context, it is important to understand in detail how a PV panel reacts to different environmental conditions and how these affect total performance. An experiment has been designed to investigate the performance of a PV panel under various highly non-uniform temperature and irradiance profiles, generated by artificial lighting. Measurements of irradiance and temperature distribution are related to measured I–V curves and used as input to the five-parameter model. The results show the limitations of the model to emulate the PV response under such extreme conditions and provide useful insights about the effect of the temperature profile on the PV performance.