ICA-based solar photovoltaic fault diagnosis

Faults are natural for any practical system including photovoltaic (PV) power generation systems that need to be diagnosed accordingly to maximize its efficiency. However, faults can be rectified only if they are diagnosed correctly. Therefore, a credible and reliable diagnosis is required for maintenance of the system. In this paper, independent component analysis (ICA)-based wireless fault diagnosis technique is proposed for solar PV systems. ICA enables us to communicate without having any prior information about the signals and the wireless channel. The proposed technique can diagnose faults related to electrical failures, climatic impacts, variable irradiance, and irregular cell temperature. Effectiveness of the proposed technique is evaluated through extensive simulations utilizing practical data.