Efficient fault detection and diagnosis procedure for photovoltaic systems

This paper proposes a simple method to detect and diagnose short circuits and open circuits faults in photovoltaic (PV) systems based on the evaluation of three coefficients. The proposed method consists fundamentally on two steps: an offline step based on a simulated model and an online step in which a comparison of the real measured coefficients against those obtained in the offline step is performed. The simulated model of the PV array has been validated using a real experimental data of a daily profile from a 3 kWp grid connected system installed at Algiers. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been evaluated based on PSIM™/Matlab™ Co-simulation approach of four operating cases: healthy operating case, one short circuit module in a string operating case, five short circuits modules in a string operating case, and finally a completely disconnected string operating case. Simulation results have demonstrated the ability of the proposed method to detect and diagnose short circuits and open circuits faulty operation under any meteorological conditions.