Integrated micro tesla magnetic sensor for detecting photovoltaic cells failure

Abstract

Recently more attention on the failure of PV systems has been paid and more reports have been found in PV related papers. Various methods to detect failure of PV module have been developed; They are visual method, I-V characteristic method, electroluminescence (EL) method, UV fluorescence method, signal transmission method, IR thermography method, photoluminescence (PL) method. However, each method has some limitations. Developing a new alternative diagnostic method of PV cells will be required for efficient operation of PV system. The proposed method uses μ-tesla magnetic sensor (MI-CB-1DM) to detect failure in a PV cell. The experimental design carried out in this study covered two stages. In the first stage, we developed a method for detecting faults in PV cells using the μ-tesla magnetic sensor method. In this second stage a calculation will be made to determine the current level due to the failure of the PV cell. The results show that Bx at the lower busbar in the degraded module has smaller magnetic density than the upper busbar. No obvious difference can be seen in the Bx and By profiles between the normal and degraded cells.