Failures causes analysis of grid-tie photovoltaic inverters based on faults signatures analysis (FCA-B-FSA)

Abstract

Nowadays, most countries convert conventional electricity power plants to green power generation to limit CO2 emissions and mitigate global warming. Hence, renewable energy sources play a significant role, and Mega-scale Photovoltaic (PV) power plants are widely constructed to use free green solar energy as one of the best practices for using renewable energy sources. The central inverter is considered the most important core equipment in the Mega-scale PV power plant which suffers from several partial and total failures. This paper introduces a new methodology for Failure Causes Analysis (FCA) of grid-connected inverters based on the Faults Signatures Analysis (FSA). Hence, this methodology is called Failure Causes Analysis Based Fault Signature Analysis (FCA-B-FSA). The objective is to link the Fault’s Signatures (FSs) and the correlated Root Causes (RCs). To achieve this objective, this paper discusses many directions starting with reviewing the inverters’ FCA which was investigated in previous publications. As the previous studies of the inverters FCA are limited, this paper focuses on statistical gathering for the FSs of the grid-tie PV inverters and the egalitarian inverters. Then, the investigated work in this paper presents a proposed methodology to link the FSs to the correlated RCs. The investigation outcomes briefly present a proposed validation plan to be considered for FCA-B-FSA of a real incident of a grid-tie PV inverter as a future work.