In this paper, a new approach based on adaptive Differential Evolution Technique (DET) is used to extract the parameters of solar cell models accurately. The adaption is achieved through crossover and mutation factor. It is indicated that the optimization with an objective function can minimize the difference between the estimated and measured values. In order to verify the performance of the proposed system, three different solar cell models: single diode model, double diode model, and photovoltaic module are used to extract the parameters. The analysis is performed by using the voltage and current data sets. The result shows that the proposed DET outperforms these other methods: chaos particle swarm optimization (CPSO), genetic algorithm (GA), harmony search algorithm (HSA), and artificial bee swarm optimization (ABSO). Furthermore, the DET technique is practically validated by two different solar cell types such as monocrystalline and multi-crystalline and modules. The performance of solar cell models has been verified and the outcome shows that it is an optimal method which suits the parameter extraction of solar cells and modules. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.