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 kip 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.