Abstract
Despite the rapid development of photovoltaic (PV) industry, direct current (DC) fault arc remains a major threat to the safety of PV system and personnel. While extensive research on DC fault arc has been conducted, little attention has been paid to the long-time interactions between the PV system and DC arc. In this paper, a simulation system with an arc model and PV system model is built to overcome the inconvenience of the fault-arc experiments and understand the mechanism of these interactions. For this purpose, the characteristics of the series DC arc in a small grid-connected PV system are first investigated under uniform irradiance. Then, by comparing with different arc models, the Habedank model is selected to simulate the fault arc and a method to determine its parameters under DC arc condition is proposed. The trends of simulated arc waveforms are consistent with the measured data, whose fitting degree in adjusted R-squared is between 0.946 and 0.956. Finally, a phenomenon observed during the experiment, that the negative perturbation of the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm can reduce the arc current, is explained by the proposed model.
Highlights
The direct current (DC) fault arc is essentially a gas discharging phenomenon
In 2011, an arc-fault interrupter was firstly required in PV systems above 80 V by the National Electrical Code (NEC) [3]
UnderstandInthe between the arc and maximum power point tracking (MPPT) action the experimental to understand the interactions between the arc variation and action from the experimental
Summary
The direct current (DC) fault arc is essentially a gas discharging phenomenon. The huge amount of heat released by the burning arc can ignite the surrounding combustible materials [1], which leads to fire hazard and malfunction of the photovoltaic (PV) system. The earliest recorded fire hazard at a PV station caused by DC fault arc dates back to the 1990s [2]. With the rapid growth of PV installed capacity, DC fault arc becomes a potential danger that cannot be ignored. In 2011, an arc-fault interrupter was firstly required in PV systems above 80 V by the National Electrical Code (NEC) [3]. The DC fault arc in PV systems has attracted extensive attention from academia and industry
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
