Development of a Low-Cost Data Acquisition System for Analyzing the Health of a Photovoltaic System

Abstract

In recent years, fault diagnosis has become a major concern for ensuring the sustainability of photovoltaic systems. This article aims to develop a low-cost data acquisition device based on the Arduino card to collect data using sensors on two photovoltaic modules. Four defects were intentionally created on a photovoltaic panel and analyzed individually based on the evolution of current and voltage parameters over time. The results indicate that in the event of a fault, the current drops suddenly with a slight decrease in voltage. Under normal conditions, the maximum observed current was 3.8 A for an irradiation of 904 W/m2, compared to 2.2 A for 909 W/m2 and 32.78°C in the event of partial shading. This value further decreases to a maximum of 1.8 A for 867 W/m2 in an open circuit. The observation reveals that the partial shading fault with a disconnected bypass diode and open circuit has similar characteristics to the open circuit fault. However, it is important to note that this cannot be generalized as the fault only occurs in a configuration of two PV modules in parallel.