This paper presents the design and the development of specialized software, by which the characteristics of a photovoltaic panel can be tested and analyzed. The software controls a hardware module, which implements the electrical load of a photovoltaic panel and monitors its voltage. The values, measured by the hardware module, are transmitted to a PC via a serial interface. Then, these values can be visualized in a graphic form by the software, which allows the plotting of the volt-ampere and

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... he power-volt output characteristics of the photovoltaic panel. The elaborated software enables us to set the parameters of the study: initial current and the current increment steps. The measured parameter values are recorded as PC files, allowing subsequent visualization and examination of data.