Energy required for the optical excitation of carriers onto defect levels is a parameter that compliments thermal activation energy and helps to understand the electronic properties of defects under study. Here a modification of the photoinduced current transient spectroscopy (PICTS) based on phase-sensitive detection is proposed which makes possible to measure the excitation spectra of defect levels. The representative results of the excitation spectra of the epitaxial CuGaSe2 and polycrystalline Cu(In,Ga)Se-2 thin films are presented. They illustrate the usefulness of the method as a tool for studying defect properties by providing data that supplement information derived from standard PICTS spectroscopy. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.