Fault detection and repair of DSC arrays through memristor sensing

Abstract

Fault tolerant Photovoltaic array used for green energy systems is emerging as an important area of study because of growing emphasis on reliable design. Among various photovoltaic cells Dye Solar Cell (DSC) is a promising low-cost photovoltaic (PV) technology and high energy-conversion efficiency. Recently it has been shown that it has memristive behavior as well. To efficiently support this claim, in this paper we use experimental data to characterize DSC cell and show that it exhibits memristor state behavior and developed a SPICE model. We use memristive DSC cells as sensing devices. This enables us to identify faulty cells in regular DSC. First, we present the model from the experimental data. A search algorithm is defined to identify the faulty components of the DSC array that fulfill the first requirement of a fault tolerant design. The proposed diagnosis method utilizes recently proposed fault detection solution for efficient testing of PV cells in the presence of faults. We divide the array into segments such that any faults is detectable thereby achieving high diagnosis accuracy. The proposed diagnosis method has been validated through SPICE simulation. Spare cells are to repair the faulty array.