A New Design for Smart Photovoltaic Module with Fault Detection Properties

Solar power places the third in the renewable energy around the world. To provide such power, huge Photovoltaic (PV) plants are manufactured and installed all over the world. In such plants, faults occur in different stages of the electrical generation process. This paper proposes a new design of a smart PV module that detects and locates faults in the essential material of the PV plants, the PV module. For this aim, Hall Effect sensors have been connected to each substring in a PV module to provide real-time readings from the substrings. These readings have been processed by an algorithm that detects faults and differentiate the normal overall shading from the abnormal shading cases on the PV module. these substrings are designed to be demountable on the PV module for replacement if a sever permanent damage happens. Detecting and locating such faults with this design can save both, time and cost in the repairing process, and early maintenance in such cases provides a longer lifespan of a PV module.