Vol.:(0123456789) SN Applied Sciences (2020) 2:56 | https://doi.org/10.1007/s42452-019-1851-z Research Article Portable solar panel efciency measurement system Galib Hashmi 1  · Md. Shamim Hasan 2  · Md. Mazedul Haque Efat 2  · Md. Habibur Rahman 1 Received: 24 October 2019 / Accepted: 5 December 2019 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 Abstract Solar panel plays a major role in the renewable energy sector. Unfortunately substandard and unspecifed solar panels are seen now a days in the market of many countries. Furthermore, solar panel testing equipment is not available everywhere and is a costly device. So, to fulfll customer rights and to know the efciency of the solar panels, a simple portable solar panel efciency measurement system has been designed and developed. The system includes a single Ardunio Uno, a voltage sensor, a current sensor (ACS712), a multi meter and a lux meter. The measurement has been taken under real sun conditions. The system determines maximum voltage (V max ), maximum current (I max ), maximum power (P m ), fll fac- tor (FF) and efciency (η) of the solar panel. The system reveals that the efciency of a 10 W, 8 W and 0.65 W silicon solar panel are 9.65%, 8.59% and 8.4% respectively. Keywords Efciency · Ardunio · Lux meter · Solar panel 1 Introduction In 2014, approximately 1.19 billion people lived without electricity. Furthermore, in Asia, countries like Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh respectively has approximately 51, 41 and 61 million people living without electricity access [1]. The demand for electricity still remains today and it is increasing twice as fast as overall energy use [2]. To combat this electricity crisis and to provide electric- ity to electricity deprived people, of-grid solar energy is playing a crucial role. Of-grid solar energy, in particular solar home systems has been one of the fastest growing industries in providing energy access [3]. As of 2016, more than 6 million Solar Home Systems (SHSs) are operational worldwide, with 25 million people benefting from them [4]. Regarding SHSs, Bangladesh has the largest market worldwide with more than 4.5 million units installed [5]. The key element of a SHS is one or more PV modules and 98% of the installed solar panels used for SHS program in Bangladesh are imported from abroad [6, 7]. Currently there are still a vast demand of solar panels in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, it is seen in the local market that some of the imported solar panels are unspecifed and substand- ard [8]. In addition, substandard solar panels are also seen in the market of many countries like India, USA and Malawi [9–11]. As there is no standard testing institution to moni- tor the quality of solar panels in Bangladesh, diferent size and power PV modules has fooded the market of Bang- ladesh. Solar panel testing is only possible in Bangladesh Council of Scientifc and Industrial Research (BCSIR), Dhaka and is very difcult for rural area people to come to the Dhaka City with the solar panels for testing. Moreover, in BCSIR solar panel testing takes about 10,000–15,000 BDT per panel which is a lot of money for common people. In addition, various companies like Oriel Instruments, Solar Tester, Abet Technologies, Nvis Technologies Pvt. Ltd sell diferent commercial solar panel efciency measurement system. Even though these commercial available systems are very accurate but they are very costly. Thus it is difcult to provide this costly equipment to diferent areas for test- ing in the under developed countries. Therefore, problems like substandard solar panels, few testing facilities and * Galib Hashmi, galib_90@yahoo.com | 1 Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 2 Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Institute of Science and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh.