About 20 methods of determining the solar cell series resistance R~ are reviewed. Their differences lie principally in: (i) experimental conditions (darkness or illumination, flash or constant illumination, static or dynamic mode, temperature conditions, frequential or non-frequential regime); (ii) number of diodes quoted in the solar cell model ; (iii) other assumptions (constant ideality factor or not, infinite or finite shunt resistance) ; (iv) simultaneous determination of other parameters or not. Before discussing their specifications, the authors assess 12 of them using a commercial single-crystal silicon solar cell (78.5 cm 2 total area).
The obtained R~ values extend from 0.4 to 55.1 m~ cm 2. Those values are compared to results from other workers which lie in the following interval : [0 ; 1600]ml~cm 2. Those discrepancies are due essentially to : (i) intrinsic differences amongst the methods ; and (ii) differences in solar cell basic materials, structures, fabrication modes and areas. This second kind of discrepancy is found to be the principal reason of discordance between our results and those of other workers. Furthermore, one can note that R~ values decrease when solar cell area increases. This is in agreement with the Lindmayer and Allison relationship between R~ and the number of front ohmic contact fingers.