THERMAL FAULT DETECTION SYSTEM FOR PV SOLAR MODULES

Abstract

Photovoltaic (PV) modules used to convert sunlight into electricity. PV researches and industries are rapidly becoming popular in the energy field since PV technologies do not harm to environment and use sun which is unlimited energy source. Nowadays, many applications are realized with photovoltaic (PV) modules in different areas such as buildings, aviation, solar power plants, land and sea transportations, etc. Construction, operation and maintenance of solar PV system are not easy and complex. There are many methods for PV plants inspection such as visual inspection, using current sensors, comparing the input and output power units of PV modules, and thermal monitoring with infrared cameras. Monitoring the differences on the PV module output voltage by means of sensors is the most appropriate methods but it is very expensive solution since there are thousand PV modules in some plants. Thermal monitoring system is more suitable method for large PV plants' inspection. Because, it reduces the fault detection costs and provide shorten maintenance time. The main aim of this paper is to investigate thermal monitoring of the PV solar modules and realize image processing by thermal radiation on PV modules. For this purpose, it is created a wireless directable robotic vehicle which has RF and thermal camera, two brushless hub motor and X-Bee modules to send direction commands. In this way, the robot moves between the panels and sent data for user whether there is fault on the panels or not. The test results indicate that PV module faults are detected effectively by using thermal cameras.