How to determine Solar Panel Performance Ratio using Rheostat, Solar Irradiance and Temperature

This video shows a professional way to determine a solar panel's performance based on Maximum Power operation. Many people out there just measuring short circuit current or open circuit voltage which is not relevant.
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Solarduino blog page for Irradiation Meter :
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[@edsteve]

The solar intensity is not involved in the calculation of the Performance Ratio? Why do you even make the effort measuring it if it doesn't affect the calculated performance? That doesn't seem right to me.

[@chen4077]

Yeah seems kinda redundant to include it in the user input when its not involved in the calculation

[@Nick_Tag]

fools -- although you could also think to measure the size of the size of the cell/panel and divide that by the Measured Max Power... these units are smaller than 1m^2 so the 11.5W number will get closer to the 667W/m^2 number and should turn out to be around 8-28% of that input. Unless it is broken of course

[@puganesachandran937]

Why rheostat must be connected to the solar panel

[@solarduino1374]

Hi, Rheostat is used to adjust circuit resistance so that panel can produce different voltage & current. By plotting different current and voltage graph we can find the potential maximum power from a panel.

[@puganesachandran937]

@@solarduino1374 if the panel has max of 250W.. Can i connect to 50W Resistor?

[@edsteve]

@@puganesachandran937 Depends on your resistor value. If you try to achieve to do what you saw on the video. You will fry the potentiometer.