Automated Fault Management System in a Photovoltaic Array: A Reconfiguration-Based Approach

Luis D. Murillo-Soto and Carlos Meza
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Luis D. Murillo-Soto: School of Electromechanical Engineering, Costa Rica Institute of Technology, Cartago 30101, Costa Rica
Carlos Meza: School of Electronic Engineering, Costa Rica Institute of Technology, Cartago 30101, Costa Rica

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 9, 1-19

Abstract: This work proposes an automated reconfiguration system to manage two types of faults in any position inside the solar arrays. The faults studied are the short-circuit to ground and the open wires in the string. These faults were selected because they severely affect power production. By identifying the affected panels and isolating the faulty one, it is possible to recover part of the power loss. Among other types of faults that the system can detect and locate are: diode short-circuit, internal open-circuit, and the degradation of the internal parasitic serial resistance. The reconfiguration system can detect, locate the above faults, and switch the distributed commutators to recover most of the power loss. Moreover, the system can return automatically to the previous state when the fault has been repaired. A SIMULINK model has been built to prove this automatic system, and a simulated numerical experiment has been executed to test the system response to the faults mentioned. The results show that the recovery of power is more than 90%, and the diagnosis accuracy and sensitivity are both 100% for this numerical experiment.

Keywords: photovoltaic simulation; distributed switching matrix; fault diagnosis; reconfiguration algorithms; real-time algorithms (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: 2021
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