Introduction to Condition Monitoring of PV System

Abstract

The pace of installation of photovoltaic (PV) systems is growing over the last two decades worldwide. The PV systems have been installed in extreme climatic and environmental conditions which often degrade their performance. In order to improve the performance of PV systems, duly maintenance and detection of faults are required which prompt for the need for condition monitoring. The purpose of condition monitoring of PV systems is to acquire information about power outages, to maintain good power quality, protection from islanding, evaluation of performance, identification of faulty modules, calculation of efficiency of modules, and compliance to grid standards for connecting PV to the grid. The condition monitoring of a PV system requires a substantial amount of measured data and software tools. Currently, the operation and maintenance of most of the PV plants are performed by manual and dispersive means. According to studies, condition monitoring using these means is not only quite difficult to be performed but also not able to improve the efficiency up to desired level. Hence, it is desirable to implement novel inspection methods and analysis tools for efficient condition monitoring and accurate module defect detection in PV systems. At present, there is a considerable interest given to the storage, dispatchability, and management of photovoltaic (PV) power in real time. So, there is need to manage. Researchers suggest that automation of the monitoring techniques, real-time processing of information, and Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) technology can play an important role in the future. Apart from the commercial applications, photovoltaic (PV) systems in residential premises are growing day by day and represent a predominant component around the globe. As the PV systems are major sources in microgrids and distributed generation (DGs), reliable islanding detection algorithm is required to determine the electrical grid status and operation in the grid-connected inverter. The issues related to performance of PV systems have the strong dependency on many factors such as insolation intensity, ambient temperature, cell temperature, air velocity, humidity, cloudiness, and pollution. Therefore, in this chapter, conditioning monitoring of PV systems is explained.