The purpose of this article was to present a photovoltaic simulator that is based on two-diode model. In this simulator, the two-diode model was used for simulation and the performance of photovoltaic cell. The dual-diode model at low-level radiation has fewer errors and is more accurate, and this makes the photovoltaic cells to have fewer errors and more accuracy in the shade. To reduce the computational time, only four parameters were extracted from the model. To validate the accuracy of the proposed model, three PV modules of different types (multi-crystalline and mono-crystalline) from various manufacturers are tested. The performance of the model was evaluated against the popular single diode models. It was found that the proposed model is superior when subjected to irradiance and temperature variations. In particular, the model matches accurately for all important points of the I-V curves, that is, the peak power, short-circuit current and open circuit voltage. The accuracy of the constructed simulator was evaluated by the real module and the laboratory and simulation results indicated the high accuracy of the simulator. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.