The objective of this paper is to calculate the single diode model parameters (A, R-s, R-sh, I-L, and I-0) of photovoltaic modules in most straightforward way no using iterative techniques and an additional information of pre-measured/digitized current-voltage curves. For that purpose, a new method based on solely datasheet information is introduced. The novelty of this method is to use a dark saturation current as an initial parameter as calculating the single diode model parameters. The effectiveness of proposed was validated using current-voltage curves of five commercially available photovoltaic modules at standard test conditions. The current-voltage curves were simulated using the proposed method and compared with datasheet supplied current-voltage curves by means of a root means square error tool. It has been founded that the new method, which proposes a very simple calculation procedure to obtain the single diode model parameters, meets international standards as simulating current-voltage curves of photovoltaic modules. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.