Monitoring and Fault Detection in Photovoltaic Systems Based On Inverter Measured String I-V Curves

Most photovoltaic (PV) string inverters have the hardware capability to measure at least part of the current-voltage (I-V) characteristic curve of the PV strings connected at the input. However, this intrinsic capability of the inverters is not used, since I-V curve measurement and monitoring functions are not implemented in the inverter control software. In this paper, we aim to show how such a functionality can be useful for PV system monitoring purposes, to detect the presence and cause of power-loss in the PV strings, be it due to shading, degradation of the PV modules or balance-of-system components through increased series resistance losses, or shunting of the PV modules. To achieve this, we propose and experimentally demonstrate three complementary PV system monitoring methods that make use of the I-V curve measurement capability of a commercial string inverter. The first method is suitable for monitoring single or independent PV strings, and is based on evaluating the ratio of certain operation points on the string I-V curve. The second method is applicable to PV systems with identical strings, and is based on monitoring and inter-comparison of string I-V curve parameters. For PV systems with non-identical strings, or when all strings can be affected by faults, we propose to use in-plane irradiance and module temperature measurements, and a performance model of the PV strings, to predict the optimal string I-V curve parameters, and then perform the inter-comparison with the measured values, to identify the cause of the faults.