Modeling of photovoltaic (PV) modules is an important issue studied in the literature. The appropriate equivalent circuit is widely used to model the PV module in order to evaluate its performance as well as estimate its behavior with other parts of a system in interconnected employment. Estimation of the parameters of equivalent circuit poses challenges which has been addressed in the literature. Determining the parameters of a PV model is generally based on experimental results but the approach which only uses the available information provided by the manufacturer is practically preferred. Since data sheets provide limited information, accurate and explicit determination of parameters would be a favorite procedure. Sometimes, specific tests are performed to obtain more data to overcome this problem which of course has its own limitations. In this paper, a set of equations required for derivation of five parameters of one exponential PV model is extracted and a systematic approach for derivation of these parameters is developed based on basic data sheet numerical information. Performance of the proposed approach for different types of PV modules is evaluated through comparing the results with experimental measurement and results of the previous works. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.