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Reliability, Availability and Maintainability Analysis for Grid-Connected Solar Photovoltaic Systems

A. Sayed, M. El-Shimy, M. El-Metwally and M. Elshahed
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A. Sayed: Electrical power and Machines department, the higher Institute of Engineering, El’Shorouk 11837, Egypt
M. El-Shimy: Electrical power and Machines department, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Cairo 11566, Egypt
M. El-Metwally: Electrical power and Machines department, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt
M. Elshahed: Electrical power and Machines department, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 7, 1-18

Abstract: Recently, solar power generation is significantly contributed to growing renewable sources of electricity all over the world. The reliability and availability improvement of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems has become a critical area of interest for researchers. Reliability, availability, and maintainability (RAM) is an engineering tool used to address operational and safety issues of systems. It aims to identify the weakest areas of a system which will improve the overall system reliability. In this paper, RAM analysis of grid-connected solar-PV system is presented. Elaborate RAM analysis of these systems is presented starting from the sub-assembly level to the subsystem level, then the overall system. Further, an improved Reliability Block Diagram is presented to estimate the RAM performance of seven practical grid-connected solar-PV systems. The required input data are obtained from worldwide databases of failures, and repair of various subassemblies comprising various meteorological conditions. A novel approach is also presented in order to estimate the best probability density function for each sub-assembly. The monitoring of the critical subassemblies of a PV system will increase the possibility not only for improving the availability of the system, but also to optimize the maintenance costs. Additionally, it will inform the operators about the status of the various subsystems of the system.

Keywords: Availability; maintainability; reliability; failure rate; repair rate; probability density function (PDF) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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