The extraction of the photovoltaic cells and panels parameters still represents a hot topic, despite the numerous methods proposed by researchers in scientific literature. In order to optimize the efficiency of photovoltaic cells and panels and to predict the energy they generate, it is useful to accurately calculate their parameters function of temperature and irradiance. This paper proposes the Successive discretization algorithm developed to extract five parameters of photovoltaic cells and panels using the current voltage characteristic and the one diode model. Three widely used standard datasets, one for the photovoltaic cell and two for photovoltaic panels, are utilized. Other three datasets are analyzed, one measured in laboratory conditions for the monocrystalline photovoltaic cell and two under natural sunlight for the monocrystalline photovoltaic panel. The proposed algorithm proves its performance through comparison with other over twenty accepted methods used in specialized literature. The comparison is made for five parameters and the root mean square error. The obtained results demonstrate that the method presented is one of the best and it increases the determination accuracy of important photovoltaic cells' parameters. Thus, the Successive discretization algorithm is a very good candidate as tool for extracting the photovoltaic cells and panels parameters.