Characterization of electric faults in photovoltaic array systems

Abstract

Electric faults in photovoltaic (PV) systems cause negative economic and safety impacts, reducing their performance and making unwanted electric connections that can be dangerous for the user. Line-to-line, ground and open circuit faults, are three of the main faults that happen in a photovoltaic array system. This work proposes a characterization of the equivalent circuits and the voltage-power (VP) curves at the output of multiple PV arrays under different topological configurations and fault conditions to evaluate the effects of these three main faults on the performance of a photovoltaic array system, taking into account the influence of temperature and solar radiation. This work presents a validation of the characterization by measuring the output VP curves of a low-power photovoltaic array system under real outdoor conditions. This method can be useful in future works to develop low cost systems capable of detecting and classifying electric faults in photovoltaic array systems.