RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Development of a GIS Tool for High Precision PV Degradation Monitoring and Supervision: Feasibility Analysis in Large and Small PV Plants
A1 Simón Martín, Miguel de
A1 Diez Suárez, Ana María
A1 Álvarez de Prado, Laura
A1 González Martínez, Alberto
A1 Puente Gil, Álvaro de la
A1 Blanes Peiró, Jorge Juan
A2 Ingenieria Electrica
K1 Energía
K1 Ingeniería industrial
K1 Photovoltaics
K1 PV plants
K1 PV faults
K1 Geographic Information System
K1 PV supervision and maintenance
K1 3322.02 Generación de Energía
K1 3310.05 Ingeniería de Procesos
AB [EN] It is well known that working photovoltaic (PV) plants show several maintenance needs due to wiring and module degradation, mismatches, dust, and PV cell defects and faults. There are a wide range of theoretical studies as well as some laboratory tests that show how these circumstances may affect the PV production. Thus, it is mandatory to evaluate the whole PV plant performance and, then, its payback time, profitability, and environmental impact or carbon footprint. However, very few studies include a systematic procedure to quantify and supervise the real degradation effects and fault impacts on the field. In this paper, the authors first conducted a brief review of the most frequent PV faults and the degradation that can be found under real conditions of operation of PV plants. Then, they proposed and developed an innovative Geographic Information System (GIS) application to locate and supervise them. The designed tool was applied to both a large PV plant of 108 kWp and a small PV plant of 9 kWp installed on a home rooftop. For the large PV plant, 24 strings of PV modules were modelized and introduced into the GIS application and every module in the power plant was studied including voltage, current, power, series and parallel resistances, fill factor, normalized PV curve to standard test conditions (STC), thermography and visual analysis. For the small PV installation three strings of PV panels were studied identically. It must be noted that PV modules in this case included power optimizers. The precision of the study enabled the researchers to locate and supervise up to a third part of every PV cell in the system, which can be adequately georeferenced. The developed tool allows both the researchers and the investors to increase control of the PV plant performance, to lead to better planning of maintenance actuations, and to evaluate several PV module replacement strategies in a preventive maintenance program. The PV faults found include hot spots, snail tracks, ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) discoloration, PV cell fractures, busbar discoloration, bubbles and Si discoloration.
PB MDPI
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10612/20922
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10612/20922
NO de Simón-Martín, M., Diez-Suárez, A.-M., de Prado, L. Á., González-Martínez, A., de la Puente-Gil, Á., & Blanes-Peiró, J. (2017). Development of a GIS tool for high precision PV degradation monitoring and supervision: Feasibility analysis in large and small PV plants. Sustainability (Switzerland), 9(6). https://doi.org/10.3390/SU9060965
DS BULERIA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de León
RD 26-jun-2024