I-V curves under different PV module fault conditions.

I-V curves under different PV module fault conditions.

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Fault detection and repair of the components of photovoltaic (PV) systems are essential to avoid economic losses and facility accidents, thereby ensuring reliable and safe systems. This article presents a method to detect faults in a PV system based on power ratio (PR), voltage ratio (VR), and current ratio (IR). The lower control limit (LCL) and u...

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... from one of the strings could be lower than that of the other strings. This situation can occur when PV modules connected in strings are not capable of generating electricity in the normal way because the PV module has been somehow polluted or damaged. When such mismatching has occurred, the I-V curve of the system has the shape of curve 1 in Fig. ...
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... mismatching of modules in strings or arrays usually occurs because of differences in generated electricity. Curve 2 of Fig. 1 is a case where the front surface of a PV system has been generally contaminated or plenty of time has passed since installation, resulting in decreasing ...
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... the PV cell at the open-circuit voltage because the overall current flows through the PV cell, resulting in the series resistance of 0. By contrast, around the open-circuit voltage, the series resistance greatly affects the I-V curve. The I-V curve of a PV module as the series resistance increases could be drawn in a similar form as curve 5 in Fig. ...
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... formed, the current generated from the PV module and opencircuit voltage decreases. A fault caused by the shunt resistance is even more drastic at low-irradiation conditions because the light-induced current is lesser in this situation. The I-V curve of the PV module as the shunt resistance decreases could be drawn in a similar form as curve 6 in Fig. 1. The parallel resistance can be approximated as the slope of the I-V curve at the short-circuit current ...
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... ¯ x i and ¯ y i are the average values of x i and y i , respectively, and n is the size of the samples of each variable. In Figs. 1, 3, and 5, the numbers in the upper half refer to the correlation coefficients between the variables, and the red lines in the lower half indicate the linearity between the variables [32]. The data used for the Pearson correlation analysis were collected from the test site, which is discussed in detail in Section ...
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... (24), the V R for various cases of defective modules was calculated and is illustrated in Fig. 10. A comparison was made for four configurations: 6 (series) by 6 (parallel), 9 by 4, 12 by 3, and 18 by ...
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... proportionally to the number of parallel connections. In a series connection of PV modules, the current is insensitive to the number of faulty modules in a string when the bypass diode is activated. However, when the entire string becomes faulty, the current of the PV array decreases, which is the definition of parallel fault. This is shown in Fig. 11, as the current of each configuration decreases in a step-like ...
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... Power Ratio (P R ): The power ratio measured at maximum power point is calculated by dividing the measured value of P mp by the multiplied value of the voltage and current, which were predicted using the model, as presented in Table I. P R is calculated using Fig. 12 illustrates the change in the calculated P R as the number of faulty modules changes in the PV system, which consists of the same number of PV modules but in a different configuration of series and parallel connections. In a parallel fault, all three configurations showed a similar reduction rate of PR. Notably, the reduction rates of ...
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... fault detection and diagnosis algorithm for PV systems was designed, as shown in Fig. 13. In the first stage of the algorithm, the measured values of the output data and environmental variables are fed to the PV system. Subsequently, P R , V R , and I R are calculated using the equations presented in Section II. These values of P R , V R , and I R are the standard values used to determine if faults have occurred in the PV ...
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... outdoor testing site was designed to verify the fault detection/diagnosis algorithm, as presented in Section III, and is shown in Fig. 14. The PV system was composed of 36 PV modules with the characteristics of 50 W (18 V and 2.77 A). A total of 12 modules are connected in series forming a string and three strings are connected in parallel to form an array. The specifications of the PV modules used in the test are listed in Table II. The geographical coordinates of the ...
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... types of fault conditions in the PV system were designed: series, parallel, and total. These are shown in Fig. 15. The series and parallel faults were defined in Section III-C. The total fault is a case where both voltage and current of PV array have dropped due to complex reasons, such as open-/short-circuited problem and shading. In this study, the total fault condition has been emulated by decreasing the current and voltage of the array. ...
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... change in P R value for each fault situation is shown in Fig. 16. In the case of a series fault, P R decreased in phase to 0.91, 0.85, 0.76, and 0.68 as the number of faulty modules increased. This result is outside the control range of LCL and UCL, which is defined as 0.93-1.02. In the case of a total fault, P R shows a similar tendency as a series fault by decreasing to 0.88, 0.80, 0.71, and 0.62 ...
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... similar tendency as a series fault by decreasing to 0.88, 0.80, 0.71, and 0.62 as the number of faulty modules increased. Finally, for the case of a parallel fault, the P R decreased sharply to 0.66 and 0.33 as connections between the array were short circuited. The result showed that, in general, P R decreases in phase for all three fault types. Fig. 17 shows changes in V R of the PV system under each fault condition. In the case of a series fault, V R dropped to 0.95, 0.87, 0.79, and 0.69 on average, which is below the control range of LCL and UCL, defined as 0.99-1.01. In the case of a total fault, the decrease in V R is similar to that of a series fault with the values of 0.91, ...
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... total fault conditions but not under a parallel fault condition. Therefore, V R can be used as a criterion to diagnose parallel faults and the other two fault types: If V R is within a designated range, and yet still there is a drop in P R , it means that there is a parallel fault in the system; otherwise, there is either series or total fault. Fig. 18 shows the change in I R under each fault condition. In a series connection, the series fault does not affect the current of the PV array; therefore, there are no changes in I R under series fault ...

Citations

... For example, incoming shade from trees that have grown taller or buildings that were constructed later can reduce the PV system's output. Other possible effects are pollution [11] by dust and leaves or degradation of the PV modules [12]. With information about irradiation, wind speed, ambient temperature or sun angle, it is not possible to represent such caused drops in power. ...
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... Detecting faults of the PV components and fix it is necessary to avoid economic losses and big incidents that may established in this systems, thus ensuring secure and robust systems [5]. Moreover, more time and costs are suffered when malfunction is failed to be detected in a timely manner in the system. ...
... Moreover, more time and costs are suffered when malfunction is failed to be detected in a timely manner in the system. Therefore, to ensure a highquality system for prolonged, it is essential to recognize the times and locations of faults and failures immediately [5]. ...
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... Gyu Gwang Kim et al. [12] presented a method to detect faults in a photovoltaic system based on the power ratio (PR), the voltage ratio (VR), and the current ratio (IR). Each ratio's lower control limit (LCL) and upper control limit (UCL) were defined using data from a test site system under normal operating conditions. ...
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... It was found that System 1 under investigation showed an early failure symptom where the cumulative percentage of AR < 0.9 ranges between 34% to 71%, meanwhile System 2 and 3 were identified as fault-free GCPV systems with cumulative percentage AR < 0.9 ranging from 5% until 19% (Shukor et al., 2021). Likewise, a study was also conducted on failure detection at the PV array level, which involved DC AR (Kim et al., 2021). The study proposed that DC AR must range between 0.93 until 1.02 for a normal operating condition. ...
... In addition, various type of failure was diagnosed from this study, such as series, parallel and total failure. These identified failures were the factors that led to the decrease in the electrical output of the system (Kim et al., 2021). ...
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