On-site monitoring of photovoltaic power station inverters

Why do photovoltaic installations need to be monitored?

As any energy production system, photovoltaic (PV) installations have to be monitored to enhance system performances and to early detect failures for more reliability. There are several photovoltaic monitoring strategies based on the output of the plant and its nature. Monitoring can be performed locally on site or remotely.

Does autonomous power supply of PV power station monitoring system matter?

However, most of the previous research studies did not address or give importance to the autonomous power supply of the PV power station monitoring system, which is an important point, because the continuous evaluation of the operation of PV power plants depends on continuity, reliability, and effectiveness of the monitoring system.

What is PV Monitoring?

Monitoring can be performed locally on site or remotely. It measures production, focuses also on verification and follow-up of converter and communication devices' effective operation. Up to now, some faults diagnosis methods for PV components and systems have been developed.

What is a PV inverter?

PV inverter is considered as the brain of the PV system. Studies have demonstrated that it is the most vulnerable component . Inverter failures are classified into different categories: Manufacturing and design problems: PV inverter performance depends on operating conditions and the system lightening.

Can analytical monitoring of photovoltaic systems improve performance?

Finally, the report states the constructive guidelines, methods and models that may be designed for analytical monitoring of PV systems. Indeed, new diagnostic techniques and algorithms were proposed to monitor photovoltaic plants, to predict failures and to enhance PV system performance.

What is unsupervised monitoring in photovoltaic systems?

An unsupervised monitoring procedure for detecting anomalies in photovoltaic systems using a one-class Support Vector Machine