Fault detection and diagnosis of photovoltaic system using fuzzy logic control

Abstract

Among several renewable energy resources, Solar has great potential to solve the world’s energy problems. With the rapid expansion and installation of PV system worldwide, fault detection and diagnosis has become the most significant issue in order to raise the system efficiency and reduce the maintenance cost as well as repair time. This paper presented a method for monitoring, identifying, and detecting different faults in PV array. This method is built based on comparing the measured electrical parameters with its theoretical parameters in case of normal and faulty conditions of PV array. For this purpose, three ratios of open circuit voltage, current, and voltage are obtained with their associated limits in order to detect eight different faults. Moreover, the fuzzy logic control FLC method is performed for studying the failure configuration and categorizing correctly the different faults occurred. The outcomes obtained by performing the different faults representing permanent and temporary faults demonstrated that the FLC was equipped to precisely identify the faults upon their occurring. Different simulated and experimental tests are conducted to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method.