Abstract
Photovoltaic (PV) power generation systems work chronically in various climatic outdoor conditions, therefore, faults may occur within the PV arrays in PV systems. Online fault detection for the PV arrays are important to improve the system’s reliability, safety and efficiency. In view of this, a fault-detection method based on voltage and current observation and evaluation is presented in this paper to detect common PV array faults, such as open-circuit, short-circuit, degradation and shading faults. In order to develop this detection method, fault characteristic quantities (e.g., the open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current, voltage and current at the maximum power point (MPP) of the PV array) are identified first to define the voltage and current indicators; then, the fault-detection thresholds are defined by utilizing voltage and current indicators according to the characteristic information of various faults; finally, voltage and current indicators evaluated at real-time voltage and current data are compared with the corresponding thresholds to detect potential faults and fault types. The performances of the proposed method are simulated verifying by setting eight different fault patterns in the PV array. Simulation experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method, especially the capacities of distinguishing the degradation faults, partial shading faults and variable shading faults.
Highlights
With the increasing environmental concerns, solar energy has been widely used because of its inexhaustible and environmentally friendly advantages [1]
In order to inspect the performance of the proposed method for PV array fault detection, a PV system including a fault detection unit is modelled on the MATLAB/Simulink platform
The voltage and current indicators are compared with the corresponding thresholds to detect PV array faults
Summary
With the increasing environmental concerns, solar energy has been widely used because of its inexhaustible and environmentally friendly advantages [1]. Silvestre et al [20] and Yahyaoui and Segatto [21] present a new procedure for automatic fault detection in grid-connected PV systems based on the evaluation of current and voltage indicators where the computational complexity is reduced through minimizing the number of monitoring sensors. This method cannot distinguish between degradation faults and partial shading faults of the PV modules in a PV array.
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