Grid-Connected PV Virtual Instrument system (GCPV-VIS) For Detecting Photovoltaic Failure

This paper presents a design and development of a
Grid-Connected Photo Voltaic Virtual Instrumentation System
(GCPV-VIS) which is intended to facilitate monitoring and
failure detection of a grid-connected photovoltaic plant using
statistical methods. The approach has been validated using an
experimental database of environment and electrical parameters
from a 1.98 kWp plant installed at the University of
Huddersfield, United Kingdom. There are few instances of
statistical tools being deployed in the analysis of PV measured
data. The main focus of this research is, therefore, to devise a
Virtual Instrument capable of simulating theoretical
performances of PV systems and deploying statistical analysis of
PV real-time data. The fault detection is based on the comparison
between measured and theoretical output power using t-test
statistical analysis. The obtained results indicate that the
proposed method can detect the faults of the grid-connected PV
system, and can be used for continuous monitoring of PV system
status.