A novel protection scheme to detect, discriminate, and locate electric faults in photovoltaic arrays using a minimal number of measurements

Abstract

Quality degradation, power loss, and fire hazards are amongst the consequences of uncleared electric faults within photovoltaic (PV) arrays. This paper proposes an effective protection method for i) detecting electric faults using current variations, ii) discriminating them from other disturbances based on the transient response of PV cells, and iii) locating the faulty string within PV arrays with a minimal number of measurement sensors. To accomplish these, both dynamic and static models of PV cells are taken into account whilst formulating the problem. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, a prototype solar power plant is simulated under a wide variety of normal and abnormal conditions in PSCAD-EMTDC software. The simulation results verify the proposed method’s high speed and desirable accuracy. Independency from meteorological data and the need for a minimal number of measurement sensors are the salient advantages of the proposed method. Therefore, the implementation of this method would be affordable for PV systems of different scales.