A monitoring system for online fault detection in multiple photovoltaic arrays

Abstract

In this paper, a low-cost comprehensive Zigbee-based wireless monitoring system with fault detection technique is developed for online monitoring of a multiple photovoltaic (PV) array configurations. Different electrical parametric attributes were utilized to investigate the susceptibility of various commonly used PV array topologies to partial shade and electrical faults. A prediction model is used to compute a number of attributes for a given set of operating conditions - solar irradiance and PV module temperature. The predicted qualities are then compared to the ones acquired from field measurements, resulting in the identification of potentially defective operating conditions. In addition, a user-friendly web application is being built for quick Internet access to monitored data. The suggested approach is meant to have minimal processing needs and hence, a single microcontroller is employed for data transfer and fault detection. The proposed technique has been tested experimentally. The properties are shown to be significantly dependent on the shading/faults in the arrays and varied for various topologies, and may be utilized to detect/predict faults. Also, it has been shown that at varied shading levels the parallel topology produced higher power. However, with 90% system failure, all the topologies produced almost identical power.