Renewable Energy 143 (2019) 52e63

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Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

A fault diagnosis method for photovoltaic arrays based on fault

parameters identification
Yuanliang Li a, Kun Ding a, *, Jingwei Zhang a, Fudong Chen b, Xiang Chen a, Jiabing Wu a
a
College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Hohai University, Changzhou, Jiangsu 213022, China
b
Changzhou Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic System Integration and Production Equipment Technology, Changzhou, Jiangsu 213022, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Aiming at evaluating the state of the photovoltaic (PV) array and improving the reliability of the PV
Received 13 December 2018 system, a fault diagnosis method for PV arrays based on fault parameters identification is proposed in
Received in revised form this paper. Compared with existing fault diagnosis methods, the proposed method has advantages of
18 March 2019
recognizing concurrent faults and describing each fault quantitatively by identifying fault parameters
Accepted 26 April 2019
Available online 4 May 2019
from the measured current-voltage (IeV) curve of the PV array. The methodology consists of three parts.
Firstly, functional relationships between unknown parameters in the one-diode model of PV cells with
environmental parameters are obtained by parameters extraction. Secondly, a code-based fast fault
Keywords:
Fault diagnosis
simulation model (CFFSM) is established to simulate IeV curves of the PV array under various faulted
PV array conditions. Thirdly, by determining the fault parameters to be identified and constructing an objective
Simulation model function that is the error between the simulated IeV curve with the measured IeV curve, an optimi-
Optimization zation problem is formulated, in which optimal fault parameters are identified by applying the differ-
Parameters identification ential evolution (DE) algorithm. The validation experiments in summer and early spring show that the
proposed diagnosis method can identify the parameters of up to three concurrent faults, including partial
shading, short circuit, and increased series-resistance losses, under good irradiance condition with high
accuracy.
© 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction also increase the maintenance costs of PV systems every year.

In recent decades, in order to address regional energy crisis,
environmental pollution, and global warming, people have turned
their attention to the photovoltaic (PV) energy, which has advan-
tages of lower cost and more flexible installation compared with
other renewable energy sources, e.g. hydro and wind power. These
advantages and related encouraging policies have boosted the
worldwide installed capacity of PV systems. It is reported that by
the end of 2017, the global cumulative installed PV power has
exceeded 400 GW, and the newly installed PV power of over 90 GW
has exceeded the total installed capacity in 2011 [1]. However, as
the most important part of PV systems, PV arrays usually operate
under harsh outdoor conditions, e.g. sunbeam, rainfall, and soiling,
thus, PV arrays are susceptible to suffer various kinds of fault, which
may reduce the power conversion efficiency and the lifespan of PV
modules, and even cause fire hazards [2,3]. These problems will
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: dingk@hhu.edu.cn (K. Ding).
Therefore, state monitoring and fault diagnosis techniques of PV
arrays have recently received special attention from many
researchers.
PV arrays composed of widely-applied polycrystalline-silicon
modules, are susceptible to various types of fault, such as partial
shading, soiling, increased series-resistance losses, potential-
induced degradation (PID), line-line fault, ground fault, and
bypass diode failure. The concepts of aforementioned fault types
have been introduced in Refs. [4e7]. In this work, we mainly focus
on the diagnosis method of partial shading, increased series-
resistance losses and short-circuit for the polycrystalline-silicon
based string PV array (the PV module of which has one or more
substrings connected in series and each substring is connected in
parallel with a bypass diode). The partial shading is mainly caused
by the shading of birds, dust, floating clouds and buildings [4]. The
increased series-resistance losses are caused by many factors, e.g.
the degradation of contact material on the front and back surfaces
of PV modules, the degradation of series cables, the contact resis-
tance at each connection, the solder corrosion or disconnections,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2019.04.147
0960-1481/© 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
 Y. Li et al. / Renewable Energy 143 (2019) 52e63
etc. [6,7]. These factors will lead to an increase of the equivalent
series resistance in the PV array. Short circuit fault includes two
categories. One is the line-line fault mainly caused by the insulation
failure of cables, which could lead to several continuous PV mod-
ules short-circuited [4]. The other one is the short-circuit failure of
bypass diodes, which could lead to many substrings short-circuited
[7]. These two faults both result in the decrement in the open-
circuit voltage of the PV array. So this work mainly aims at the
diagnosis of short-circuited substrings caused by these two cate-
gories, but without distinguishing them.
At present, many diagnosis methods have been presented. From
the perspective of the type of data collected from the monitoring
system, it mainly can be classified into three categories. One is
based on the measurement of the infrared thermography, which is
usually used to detect hotspots or structural defects in PV modules
since these faults could cause the abnormal distribution of tem-
perature over the surface of the module [8,9]. However, infrared
thermal imagers are expensive, which are not suitable in the
diagnosis for small-scale PV arrays.
The second category is based on the measurement of the
operational voltage, current or power of the array. These methods
are usually based on the comparisons between analytically
computed outputs with measured outputs [10e13]. For example
[12], compared the simulated output power from MATLAB-
Simulink with the measured power to detect the faults and
applied deviation of the DC variables respect to the simulated ones
to indicate the existence of partial shading, degradation, and MPPT
error. Similarly, in Ref. [13], the difference between model predicted
power ratio (PR) with real-time PR was analyzed to detect and
locate faults in both the DC and AC sides of the PV system. These
methods usually have low hardware requirements but a common
limitation is that it could be difficult to indicate a specific fault type
in one diagnosis process.
The third category of methods is based on the measurement of
current-voltage (IeV) curves, which is also the focus of this work.
Compared with the second category, it can provide more infor-
mation about the state of the PV array since the IeV curve contains
many characteristic parameters, such as short-circuit current,
open-circuit voltage, maximum power point, etc. These parameters
could be easily used as the inputs of many artificial intelligence
methods, e.g. fuzzy logic and machine learning [14e18]. For
example [14], proposed an inverter scanning-based diagnosis sys-
tem and applied fuzzy classifiers to isolate partial shading,
increased series-resistance loss and potential-induced degradation,
in which many characteristic parameters extracted from measured
IeV curves under various faulted conditions are calculated as in-
dicators to establish the fuzzy rules [16]. distinguished degradation,
partial shading, short-circuit and open-circuit by applying opti-
mized kernel extreme learning machine, the input of which are
normalized characteristic parameters extracted from the measured
IeV curve. Similarly, in Ref. [17], Artificial Neural Networks was
applied as the diagnosis model to distinguish short circuit, inversed
bypass diode, shunted bypass diode, and connection resistance.
These methods are able to output a certain fault type with good
accuracy. However, two limitations exist. One is that these methods
can only recognize one type of fault during the diagnosis process
and cannot be applied to diagnose concurrent faults, such as the
increased series-resistance losses or the short circuit accompanied
by the partial shading. Actually, concurrent faults usually occur in
PV arrays. The other one is that these methods cannot give some
details to describe the recognized fault, such as the degree of partial
shading, the value of increased series-resistance, and the number of
short-circuited substrings. However, these details, which present
the severity of faults, are of great value to guide the reasonable
maintenance activities of the PV system. In addition, from the
53
perspective of the method realization, a number of collected data,
which under various faulted conditions, are used to train the ma-
chine learning model or establish the fuzzy rules for these methods.
These data are usually sampled from the field measurement or with
the help of a simulation model. For the former, it is not good for
maintaining the health of the PV array. For the latter, because most
of the simulation models of the PV array are established in circuit-
based simulation software, e.g. MATLAB-Simulink, PSIM and SPS
[16e21], these simulation models will have the following three
disadvantages: (1) poor transplantation ability; (2) high investment
costs because most circuit-based software are commercial; (3) poor
computational efficiency, more complex the circuit structure is, the
greater the amount of calculation is. Therefore, these disadvantages
will make the diagnosis methods not quite development-friendly.
In order to solve the above-mentioned limitations, fault pa-
rameters identification (FPI) method and code based modeling
technique are applied in this work. The FPI method is the extension
of the parameters identification (PI) method. Actually, PI based
diagnosis method for PV array have been presented in recent
literature [22e24]. [22,23] identified five parameters of the well-
known one-diode model and some characteristic parameters, e.g.
short-circuit current and open-circuit voltage from a large number
of simulated IeV curves under various faulted condition to estab-
lish the fault signing tables, which were used to distinguish partial
shading, by-pass diode defects, connection defects and short cir-
cuit. However, the identified parameters from IeV curves cannot
describe the characteristics of the fault directly. And the method
cannot diagnose concurrent faults. So this kind of method cannot
be regarded as fault parameters identification (FPI) based. In fact
[24], firstly proposed the FPI based diagnosis method for the PV
array. It applied the metaheuristic optimization theory to identify
the number of short-circuited and open-circuited modules from the
PV array, which can not only detect two concurrent faults but also
give them a quantitative description. However, the diagnosis of
many other common faults, e.g. partial shading and increased
series-resistance, has not been realized. Moreover, this method also
applied the MATLAB-Simulink to establish the simulation model of
the PV array, which makes the method not development-friendly.
In this work, a new FPI based diagnosis method is proposed,
which can accurately identify the parameters of up to three con-
current faults, including partial shading, short circuit, and increased
series-resistance losses (ISRL). For the partial shading, the number,
the equivalent transmittance, the area of equivalent shadow blocks
are identified. For the short circuit, the number of short-circuited
substrings is identified. For the ISRL, the value of increased series-
resistance is identified. In order to realize the identification pro-
cess, a code-based fast fault simulation model (CFFSM) is proposed
beforehand to simulate the IeV curves of PV array either under
normal or faulted conditions. Then an optimization problem is
formulated, the objective function of which is formed by the error
between the CFFSM output with the measured IeV curve of the PV
array. By applying the differential evolution (DE) algorithm, the
objective function is minimized and the optimal fault parameters
are identified. In addition, the parameters extraction of the one-
diode model (ODM) is also performed to improve the accuracy of
the CFFSM.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the parameters
extraction of the ODM is presented. In Section 3, the establishment
of the proposed CFFSM is described and its performance is exper-
imentally analyzed. In Section 4, the FPI based fault diagnosis
method is detailed. In Section 5, experiments are carried out to
validate the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed diagnosis
method. Finally, some significant results are concluded.
54 Y. Li et al. / Renewable Energy 143 (2019) 52e63

2. Parameters extraction of the ODM
In this work, the proposed CFFSM, which is a simulation model
of the PV array, is based on the one-diode model (ODM) of PV cells.
In order to make the CFFSM fit better the real PV array that might
have been operating and degrading for a period of time, unknown
parameters in the ODM should be extracted from measured IeV
curves of the PV array under various environmental conditions
(different irradiance and temperature) [25]. Then, functional re-
lationships between these unknown parameters with the
measured environmental parameters could be found.
Eq. (1) to Eq. (4) are basic equations of the ODM [26,27].

  
qðVc þ Rs Ic Þ Vc þ Rs Ic
Ic ¼ Iph  Is exp 1 
akB T Rp
G parameter according to its data distribution. It is found that all the
Iph ¼ Isc;stc ½1 þ Ki ðT  Tstc Þ
Gstc
 3  
T a qEg qEg
Is ¼ Is;stc exp  (3)
Tstc akTstc akT
I different season is different due to the influence of the climate.
Is;stc ¼  sc;stc 
qVoc;stc
exp N akT 1
cs stc
where Ic and Vc are the output current and voltage of the PV cell,
respectively; Iph is the photocurrent; Is is the saturation current of
diode; a is the ideality factor of diode; Rs and Rp are the series and
shunt resistances, respectively; kB is the Boltzmann constant
(kB z1:38064852  1023 JK1 ); q is the electronic charge
(q z1:60217662  1019 C); T is the temperature; Tstc is the tem-
perature under the standard test condition (STC); G is the irradi-
ance; Gstc is the irradiance under the STC; Is;stc is the diode reverse
saturation current under the STC; Eg is the bandgap energy; Isc;stc is
the short-circuit current under the STC; Voc;stc is the open-circuit
voltage under the STC; Ki is the current-temperature coefficient;
Ncs is the number of PV cells in a PV module (Ncs ¼ Nd  Ns , Nd
denotes the number of substrings in a PV module, Ns denotes the
number of PV cells in a substring).
Iph and Is are analytically expressed in Eqs. (2) and (3), respec-
tively, so they do not need to be extracted directly. Considering that
the measurement error of irradiance usually causes great influence
to the accuracy of extracted parameters, G in Eq. (2) is replaced by
the estimated irradiance Ge that is regarded as another unknown
parameter to be extracted. Therefore, the unknown parameter in
the ODM are becoming [Ge , a, Rs , Rp ]. In this work, we simply apply
particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to extract [Ge , a, Rs ,
Rp ] [28,29].
The field experimental PV array is a 5.28 kW array which con-
sists of 22 (Nm ¼22) TSM-240 PV modules connected in series. It is
located in Hohai University, Changzhou Campus (Latitude 31.82  N,
Table 1
The specification of the TSM-240 module.
Longitude 119.98  E). The specification of the TSM-240 module is
shown in Table 1. The module has 3 (Nd ¼3) substrings. Each sub-
string has 20 (Ns ¼20) PV cells. The IeV measurement instrument of
the experimental PV array is the GW20KN-DT inverter, which is a
three-phase grid-connected inverter produced by GOODWE Power
Supply Technology Co., Ltd. The number of sampling points for a
measured IeV curve can reach up to 256 and the scanning time is
less than 500 ms.
In this work, the parameters extraction works were done in
summer (July 11th to 27th 2018) and early spring (February 1st to
28th 2019), respectively. 1900 IeV curves were measured in sum-
mer and 920 IeV curves were measured in early spring. All the
curves were measured under normal condition and accompanied
by the measurement of in-plane irradiance and module
(1)
temperature.
In this work, suitable function is selected to fit each extracted
(2) extracted parameters have a certain functional relationship with
the measured in-plane irradiance G. The scatter plots of extracted
parameters and the corresponding fitting curves in summer are
shown in Fig. 1. Similarly, the scatter plots of extracted parameters
and the corresponding fitting curves in early spring are shown in
Fig. 2. It could be found that the fitting curve for each parameter in
(4) These fitting functions are used to predict the unknown parameters
in the ODM, which will help to improve the accuracy of the CFFSM
that will be mentioned in the next section. And the CFFSM will play
an important role in the proposed diagnosis method. Therefore, in
order to improve the performance of the diagnosis during the
whole year, it is necessary to do the extraction work regularly by
the season.
3. Code-based fast fault simulation model (CFFSM)
As mentioned in Section 1, most of PV array simulation models
are established in circuit-based software. They are featured with
poor transplantation ability, high investment cost and low
computational efficiency. In this work, the CFFSM is proposed to
solve these drawbacks, which can simulate IeV curves of the PV
array either on normal or faulted conditions. Due to the diagnostic
requirement, we mainly focus on the simulation of independent
and concurrent partial shading, short circuit and increased series-
resistance losses (ISRL). In addition, the CFFSM is code-based and
makes it easier to be transplant in many kinds of development
environments. Moreover, the CFFSM has a good computational ef-
ficiency not only due to its code-based characteristic but also
because it can reduce the invoking times of the same computing
tasks. The working mechanism of the CFFSM is based on voltage
superposition of PV cells and substrings. The minimal simulation
unit in the CFFSM is a PV cell.
3.1. The establishment of the CFFSM
First of all, some related parameters and notations are defined as
below:

Parameters Value Nsub : the total number of substrings (Nsub ¼ Nm  Nd ).

Maximum power (Pmpp;stc )
Maximum power voltage (Vmpp;stc )
Maximum power current (Impp;stc )
Open circuit voltage (Voc;stc )
Short circuit current (Isc;stc )
Current-temperature coefficient (Ki )
Voltage-temperature coefficient (Kv )
G: input irradiance matrix, G2RNsub Ns , the element Gði; jÞ rep-
240 W
resents the irradiance of jth PV cell in ith substring.
29.7 V
8.1 A T: input temperature matrix, T2RNsub Ns , the element Tði; jÞ
37.3 V represents the temperature of jth PV cell in ith substring.
8.62 A D: state vector of substrings, D2NNsub , DðiÞ ¼ 1 represents that
0.047%/ C the ith substring is short-circuited, otherwise, DðiÞ ¼ 0.
0.32%/ C
Rc : increased series-resistance of the PV array.
 Y. Li et al. / Renewable Energy 143 (2019) 52e63 55

Fig. 1. Extracted data and fitting curves of Ge (a), a (b), Rs (c) and Rp (d) in summer.

Fig. 2. Extracted data and fitting curves of Ge (a), a (b), Rs (c) and Rp (d) in early spring.

Ne : the number of different input environmental configurations
within all PV cells, which means the number of different ½Gði; jÞ;
Tði; jÞ of all PV cells.
Gd : Gd 2NNe , the element Gd ðiÞ represents the irradiance of the
ith type of environmental configuration.
T d : T d 2NNe , the element Td ðiÞ represents the temperature of
the ith type of environmental configuration.
E: E2NNsub Ne , the element Eði; jÞ represents the number of PV
cells under the jth type of environmental configuration in the ith
substring.
Nes : the number of different row vectors in E, which is used to
classify all the substrings into Nes groups.
N g : N g 2NNes , the element Ng ðiÞ represents the number of
substrings in the ith group.
Eg ði;:Þ: E g ðiÞ2N1Nes , the element Eg ði; jÞ represents the number
of PV cells under the jth type of environmental configuration in
the substring that is belong to the ith (i2½1; Nes ) group.
V g ðiÞ: the voltage sequence of the substring that is belong to the
ith (i2½1; Nes ) group.
I g ðiÞ: the current sequence of the substring that is belong to the
ith (i2½1; Nes ) group.
V a : the voltage sequence of the PV array.
I a : the current sequence of the PV array.
Wpv ðG;T;IÞ: an explicit function used to solve the ODM of the PV
cell; the input parameters are irradiance G, temperature T and a
given current I; the output is the voltage of PV cell.
The flowchart of the CFFSM is shown in Fig. 3(a) and one of its
56 Y. Li et al. / Renewable Energy 143 (2019) 52e63
examples (a PV array with 3 modules, 2 shadow blocks, 2 short-
circuited substrings and an increased series-resistance) is visual-
ized in Fig. 3(b) in order for a better understanding. From Fig. 3, the
CFFSM comprises 5 steps, each step is describes as follows.
The first step is to configure all input parameters of the PV array,
including irradiance matrix G, temperature matrix T, the state
vector of substrings D and the increased series-resistance Rc . The
partial shading could be configured by setting different irradiance
in G.
The second step is to find out the number of different environ-
mental configurations (Ne ) in all PV cells. In Fig. 3(b), three different
environmental configurations are found and corresponding envi-
ronmental parameters are saved in vector Gd and T d .
In the third step, the numbers of PV cells under different envi-
ronmental configurations in each substring are found out. These
numbers are saved in matrix E. Then Nes different row vectors in
matrix E are found out to classify all the substrings into Nes groups.
Substrings in each group have the same IeV curve due to the same
input environmental parameters, so, one group represents one IeV
curve. The number of substrings of each group is saved in vector N g
and the corresponding row vector in E of each group is saved in
matrix Eg . As shown in Fig. 3(b), five groups have been found.
In the fourth step, the substring's IeV curve of each group is
obtained. The pseudo code of calculating the substring's IeV curve
is express in Table 2, which is called SUBIV function. Its principle is:
for a given current I, the voltage of the substring could be obtained
by superposing the voltage of all of its PV cells. By increasing the
given current with a certain increment DI until reaching the short-
circuit current (sum of cells' voltage not greater than 0), the voltage
sequence of the substring could be obtained. The cells' voltage is
calculated by calling Wpv function, which is an explicit function to
solve the ODM based on the Lambert W function, as shown in Eq.
(5) [30], where Vth ¼ kT=q and its unknown parameters are pre-
dicted by the fitting functions introduced in Section 2. Compared
Fig. 3. The establishment process of the CFFSM, (a) the flowchart, (b) a visualized example.
with other numerical methods to solve the nonlinear ODM, Eq. (5)
does not require iterations and its results are analytic solutions
with absolute accuracy [30]. The current increment DI, which can
be regarded as the simulation resolution, is set to 0.02 in this work.
In addition, the input of E g ðiÞ avoids solving the ODM for all PV cells
in the SUBIV. For each given current, SUBIV just call Wpv function
once for one type of environmental configuration. When the IeV
curves of all the groups are obtained, the next work is to super-
pose the voltage sequences of these IeV curves according to
number of substrings in each group. If the group has short-circuited
substrings, corresponding voltage sequences will be subtracted.
In the fifth step, extra voltage drop coming from the increased
series-resistance Rc will be subtracted from the voltage sequence of
the PV array. Finally, the current sequence I a and voltage sequence
V a (IeV curve) of the CFFSM can be obtained.
3.2. Computational efficiency analysis of the CFFSM
In this work, the computational efficiency of the CFFSM is
analyzed by investigating the number of times the Wpv function is
invoked (Ncall ). For a given current, because of the input of E g ðiÞ, the
SUBIV function will invoke Wpv function Ne times at most. In
addition, because substrings are classified into Nes groups, only Nes
IeV curves are needed to be calculated. Therefore, if assuming that
the final short-circuit current of the PV array is Iscf , the maximum
value of Ncall will be Iscf Nes Ne =DI. However, if there is no any
simplification, Ncall will be Iscf Nsub Ns =DI. For the former, Ncall is
determined by the irradiance (irradiance will affect Iscf ), the current
increment, and the complexity of the environmental configura-
tions. Only when the environmental configurations of all PV cells
are different, Ncall will become Iscf Nsub Ns =DI. In general conditions,
Ncall is much smaller than Iscf Nsub Ns =DI.
 Y. Li et al. / Renewable Energy 143 (2019) 52e63 57

Table 2 predicted IeV curve of the CFFSM, the current RMSE, the times of
The pseudo code of calculating the IeV curve of the substring for the ith group. invoking Wpv (Ncall ) and the total computing time (Ttotal , for the
0  1
Rp  I þ Iph þ Is
computer with i7-6700HQ and 2.6 GHz dominant frequency), are
0 A1
Is Rp exp@ listed in Table 3. It can be found that the proposed CFFSM has ac-
B aVth C
Wpv ðG; T; IÞ ¼  aVth LambertWB
@
C
A (5) curate output both under faulted conditions and under normal
aVth
conditions. The output accuracy under normal conditions is more
 IRs  IRp þ Iph Rp þ Is Rp accurate than that under faulted conditions. Moreover, in order to
show the good computational efficiency of the CFFSM, it is
compared with a circuit-based simulation model proposed in
1: function SUBIV(E g ðiÞ, Gd , T d ) Ref. [31] under the condition C4, C5, and C6. The total time of this
2: j)1 model (Ttotal;2 ) is also listed in Table 2. The results show that the
3: I)0 CFFSM has strong advantages in terms of computational efficiency
4: DI)0:02
compared with the model in Ref. [31]. In addition, the minimal
5: error ) þ ∞
6: while error > 0 do
simulation unit of the model in Ref. [31] is a PV module, thus,
7: for k ¼ 1 to Ne do condition C1, C2, and C3 cannot be simulated in Ref. [31]. On the
8: if Eg ði; kÞ > 0 then contrary, the CFFSM can simulate complex partial shading by
9: Vcell ðkÞ)Wpv ðGd ðkÞ; Td ðkÞ; IÞ configuring the input irradiance for each PV cell, which makes the
10: else
simulated IeV curve more accurate.
11: Vcell ðkÞ)0
12: end if
13: end for 4. Fault parameters identification (FPI) based diagnosis
14: Vg ði; jÞ)0 method
15: Ig ði; jÞ)I
16: for k ¼ 1 to Ne do
17: Vg ði; jÞ )Vg ði; jÞ þ Vcell ðkÞ  Eg ði; kÞ In this section, the FPI based diagnosis method is detailed, which
18: end for fully takes advantages (output accuracy and computational effi-
19: error)Vg ði; jÞ ciency) of the CFFSM. This method can identify the parameters of
20: I )I þ DI concurrent faults (partial shading, short circuit, ISRL) by con-
21: j )j þ 1
structing an optimization problem, in which the output IeV curve
22: end while
23: return I g ðiÞ; V g ðiÞ of the CFFSM will continuously approach the measured IeV curve
24: end function by iteratively updating the input parameters (G, T, D, and Rc )
through a heuristic optimization algorithm. These identified fault
parameters can describe each fault quantitatively.
3.3. Experimental validation of the CFFSM
4.1. Determination of fault parameters
In order to validate the output accuracy and the computational
efficiency of the CFFSM, two experiments were performed in July For the partial shading, usually, the exact shape or area of
30th. Experiment one was under conditions with artificial con- shadows cannot be obtained directly from the measured IeV curve.
current faults. Experiment two was under normal conditions. The However, the IeV curve under partial shading can still provide
experimental platform and the fault configuration for experiment much information to approximately describe the degree or area of
one are shown in Fig. 4. The 50% transmittance plastic sheeting is the partial shading. Generally, the IeV curve will have at least one
used to create the partial shading, the 2000W power resistance is inflection point when under partial shading. Different inflection
used to create the ISRL, and the short circuit is realized by short points can be approximately equivalent to different shadow blocks
circuiting PV modules. with different equivalent transmittance shading on different sub-
The measured and predicted IeV curves of two experiments are strings, as shown in Fig. 6. The lower the equivalent transmittance
shown in Fig. 5(a) and (b), respectively. Symbols C1 to C6 in Fig. 5 of the shadow block is, the lower the corresponding current at the
denote that the IeV curves are measured on different time with inflection point is. The voltage difference between two adjacent
different in-plane irradiance and module temperature. For each inflection points or between the inflection point with the open-
circuit point depends on the number of substrings shaded by the

Fig. 4. The configuration of the concurrent faults for experiment one.

58 Y. Li et al. / Renewable Energy 143 (2019) 52e63

Fig. 5. Measured and predicted IeV curves of experiment one (a) and experiment two (b).

Table 3
Performance of the CFFSM.

Condition RMSE (A) Ncall Ttotal Ttotal;2

C1 0.26 378 3.41 e

C2 0.22 591 4.80 e
C3 0.18 766 5.89 e
C4 0.07 393 3.54 1102
C5 0.06 311 2.56 1358
C6 0.11 232 1.90 1145

corresponding shadow block, i.e. the longer the block is, the greater
the corresponding voltage difference is. The slop between one in-
flection point with its right-adjacent keen point can reflect the
number of shadowed PV cells in substrings under the corre-
sponding shadow block, i.e. the wider the block is, the more gentle
the slope is. Each equivalent shadow block has three attributes: the
length x, the width y, and the equivalent transmittance r. Thus for
the partial shading, x, y, r of each equivalent block and the number
of equivalent blocks nb are the fault parameters to be identified
from the measured IeV curve. In this work, the length unit of x and
y are both one PV cell. In order to reduce the difficulty of the
identification process, the assumption that one substring can only
be shadowed by one equivalent shadow block at most is consid-
ered, i.e. all equivalent shadow blocks will not overlap.
For the short circuit and ISRL, the number of short-circuited
substrings nsc and the equivalent resistance value Rc are consid-
ered as fault parameters to be identified, respectively. Thus, a vector
of fault parameters f ¼ ½nb ; x; y; r; nsc ; Rc  can be formed, in which x,
y, r are also the vectors saving the length, width, and transmittance,
respectively, for all equivalent shadow blocks. If f is identified and
the inputs of the CFFSM are configured accordingly, the simulated
IeV curve will be similar to that of the real PV array. It should be
noted that f does not contain any location information about each Fig. 6. Equivalent transformation.
fault. Therefore, as shown in Fig. 6, the inputs of the CFFSM could be
randomly configured, i.e. each equivalent shadow block or the
short-circuited substring could be randomly located as long as determined by capturing the peaks or troughs from the v2 I =v2 V
there is no any overlap. (second-order partial derivative of the current relative to the
voltage) of the IeV curve. As shown in Fig. 8(a), at each inflection
point, the v2 I =v2 V will generate a peak, at each knee point, the
4.2. The process of the diagnosis method
v2 I =v2 V will generate a trough as well. Therefore, commonly nb can
Fig. 7 is the process of the FPI based diagnosis method. The be determined by counting the number of peaks in v2 I =v2 V.
process comprises eight steps. However, not all the peaks are valid and it is necessary to remove
In step 1, the measured IeV curve of the PV array is obtained. many local peaks, so a threshold should be pre-set. In this work, the
In step 2, the measured IeV curve is preprocessed, in which the threshold for finding peaks is set to 1 and at most the first three
interpolation and data filter are used. highest peaks are considered. In Fig. 8(a), because three qualified
In step 3, the number of equivalent shadow blocks nb is peaks exist, the nb ¼ 3. However, the special circumstance that all
 Y. Li et al. / Renewable Energy 143 (2019) 52e63 59

total number of PV cells in the transverse direction of the PV array

(Nxa ¼ Nx  Nm , Nx is the number of PV cells in the short side of the
PV module). The width of each block can be set to 1  yi  Ny ,
where Ny is the number of PV cells in the long side of the PV
module. When under special partial shading, the searching ranges
0 < r1 < 1, 1  x1  Nxa , 1  y1  Ny are set. The range of nsc could
be set to ð1  Voc;mea =Voc;ref ÞNsub  3  nsc  Nsub , where Voc;ref is
the simulated open-circuit voltage under fault free condition
calculated by the CFFSM. The value 3 is used for defining an
expanded searching range. The range of Rc is set to 0  Rc  20, the
value 20 could be changed according to scale of the PV array.
In step 6, an objective function f ðfÞ is established, as expressed
in Eq. (6). Actually, f ðfÞ is the RMSE between the measured IeV
curve of the PV array with the predicted IeV curve of the CFFSM.
Vmea is the voltage of the measured IeV curve. Vsim is the voltage of
the predicted IeV. The inputs of the CFFSM (G, T, D, Rc ) are
configured according to estimated fault parameters f and the
measured environmental conditions. L is the sampling number of a
measured IeV curve. The constraint of the objective function is that
Fig. 7. The process of the FPI based diagnosis method.
the sum of transverse length of all equivalent shadow blocks and
the transverse length of all short-circuited substrings should not
the substrings are shadowed partially may occur, which could be greater than the transverse length of the PV array. The reason is that
caused by the shadow of the front installed PV modules or the all the equivalent shadow blocks and short circuit faults occur
parapet. In this case, as shown in Fig. 8(b), no qualified active peak within the PV array and without any overlap. Therefore, the plenty
exists, but an obvious trough can be found at the knee of the IeV function pðfÞ, as expressed in Eq. (7), is added into f ðfÞ. When the
curve. Thus, if no qualified peak can be found but a qualified constraint is satisfied, pðfÞ will not affect the f ðfÞ. When the
trough (lower than 0.5) exists, the partial shading under special constraint is not satisfied, pðfÞ will make f ðfÞ infinite, which can
case is considered and nb is set to 1. Moreover, if no qualified peak help to ensure that the final f is valid and can also accelerate the
or trough appears, the array is considered as not suffering from the convergence of the optimization algorithm.
partial shading and nb is set to 0. vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
8 u L
In step 4, according to the value of nb calculated in step 3, the >
> u1 X
>
> ðfÞ ¼ t ðVmea ðjÞ  Vsim ðjÞ2 þ pðfÞ
structure of f can be determined. The length of f is ð3  nb þ 3Þ. >
> minf
< L
In step 5, in order to accelerate the convergence of the optimi- j¼1
(6)
zation algorithm, the searching range for each parameter should be >
> X nb
>
> Nx
estimated according to the measured IeV curve. When under >
> s:t: xj þ nsc  Nxa
: N
common partial shading, the coordinate of each inflection point in j¼1 d
the IeV curve can be obtained by finding the location of qualified
peaks in v2 I =v2 V. Assuming that the obtained coordinates of in- 8
>
> X
nb
Nx
flection points are ðV1 ;I1 Þ, ðV2 ;I2 Þ, …, ðVnb ;Inb Þ, and V1 > V2 > … > Vnb , >
> pðfÞ ¼ 0 xj þ nsc  Nxa
>
> Nd
the equivalent transmittance of each equivalent shadow block can < j¼1
be set to Ii =Isc;mea  0:2  ri  Ii =Isc;mea þ 0:2, where i ¼ 1; 2;…;nb . (7)
>
> X
nb
Isc;mea is the short-circuit current of the measured IeV curve. The >
> Nx
> pðfÞ ¼ þ ∞
>
:
xj þ nsc > Nxa
Nd
value 0.2 is used for giving a searching range. The length of each j¼1
block can be set to 1  xi  Nxa ðVoc;mea  Vi Þ=Voc;mea , where Voc;mea
is the open-circuit voltage of the measured IeV curve, Nxa is the In step 7, because f ðfÞ is a nonlinear and non-differentiable
objective function, it is difficult to be solved analytically but could

Fig. 8. Measured IeV curves and corresponding v2 I =v2 V curves under partial shading, (a) common case, (b) special case.
60 Y. Li et al. / Renewable Energy 143 (2019) 52e63

be solved by heuristic optimization algorithms. In this work, the
differential evaluation (DE) algorithm is applied to optimize
(minimize) f ðfÞ and find the global optimal solution by iteratively
evolving its population (candidate solution). DE is featured with
faster convergence rate and more certainty in global optimization
compared with many other standard heuristic optimization algo-
rithms, e.g. genetic algorithm, annealing algorithm, and particle
swarm optimization [32]. The evolution process in DE mainly in-
cludes three stages: mutation, crossover and selection. These three
stages will be continuously performed until a termination criterion
is met (number of iterations performed) [33]. The algorithm pa-
rameters of DE are the population size (M), the maximum number
of iterations (Qmax ), the scaling factor (Fs ) and the crossover rate
(CR) [33]. By performing Qmax iterations, the optimal fault param-
eter fb could be obtained from the final generation, which will be
output in step 8. By the end, the faults parameters are identified
and the fault diagnosis process is fulfilled.
According to the principle of DE, the invoking times of f ðfÞ in DE
is about ðQmax þ 1ÞM, which is also the invoking times of the CFFSM.
According to our trials, M ¼ 100 and Qmax ¼ 100 are suitable for the
identification process. If the circuit-based simulation model has the
ability to simulate complex partial shading and is applied to
calculate f ðfÞ, at least 2.8 h are required to complete one identifi-
cation process. On the contrary, utilizing the CFFSM only costs 101 s
if assuming that each computing time of the CFFSM is 10 ms. Thus,
the proposed fault diagnosis method sufficiently utilizes compu-
tational efficiency of the CFFSM.
5. Experimental validation
Based on the theory mentioned above and the experimental
platform presented in Fig. 4, three days of experiments on August
1st, 2018 (summer, cloudy), August 7th, 2018 (summer, sunny) and
March 3rd, 2019 (early spring, cloudy) are used to validate the
performance of the proposed diagnosis method. For each day, the
IeV curves, the corresponding in-plane irradiance and the module
temperature are measured for every 5 min from 7:00 to 17:00. The
irradiance condition in August 1st and 7th is good, which ranged
from 200 W/m2 to 1000 W/m2. In order to validate the diagnosis
performance under low irradiance season, the experiment in early
spring was also chosen, the irradiance of which ranged from 0 to
450 W/m2.
The experiments on August 1st and March 3rd were mainly
aimed at the concurrent faults with single transmittance shadow
block. The experiment on August 7th was mainly aimed at the
concurrent faults with two different transmittance shadow blocks.
In each day, different fault parameters at different time intervals
were implemented, as listed in Tables 4e6. The diagnosis method
under normal condition was also tested during 7:00 to 9:00 and
16:00 to 17:00 in each day. The length x, width y and transmittance
r of each shadow block is expressed by vector ½x; y; r in Tables 4e6.
In this paper, the overall fault parameter of partial shading h is
defined as the criterion for conveniently comparing the identified
parameters of the partial shading with the actual parameters,
which is expressed as:
8
>
> X
nb
xi y i
< nb > 0
h ¼ i¼1 ri (8)
>
>
:
0 nb ¼ 0
h is the sum of the weighted area of all equivalent shadow
blocks when nb is greater than 0. The weight is the reciprocal of the
transmittance of each shadow block.
The measured IeV curves of three days are shown in Fig. 9(a)e
9(c), respectively. Curves at some moments were discarded because
the corresponding irradiance was too low or too fluctuant, the
inverter cannot scan a complete IeV curve, e.g. there is no any curve
could be obtained before 9:00 and after 16:00 on March 3rd due to
the shorter daytime during early spring. The comparisons between
the identified fault parameters with the real fault parameters, the
performance of the identification process are shown in Figs. 10e12,
respectively for three days.
The results of experiments in summer (August 1st and 7th) are
analyzed as follows. From Figs. 10(a) and Fig. 11(a), it is obvious that
when under partial shading, all equivalent shadow blocks are
accurately detected, which shows that the proposed diagnosis
method is very sensitive to detect partial shading. From Figs. 10(b)
and Fig. 11(b), the identified h is basically consistent with the real h,
which means the fault diagnosis has a good performance to
quantitatively describe the partial shading. From Figs. 10(c) and

Table 4
Real fault parameters on August 1st, 2018.

Time 7:00e9:00 9:00e11:00 11:00e13:00 13:00e15:00 15:00e16:00 16:00e17:00

Partial shading (½x; y; r) e [6, 2, 25%] [18, 4, 25%] [30, 8, 25%] [132, 2, 25%] e
Short circuit (nsc ) 0 9 9 9 0 0
ISRL (Rc ) 0 3 3 3 3 0

Table 5
Real fault parameters on August 7th, 2018.

Time 7:00e9:00 9:00e11:00 11:00e13:00 13:00e15:00 15:00e16:00 16:00e17:00

Partial shading (½x; y; r) e ½4; 2; 25%½6; 4; 50% ½12; 2; 25%½18; 4; 50% ½24; 4; 25%½36; 8; 50% e e
Short circuit (nsc ) 0 6 6 6 6 0
ISRL (Rc ) 0 6 6 6 6 0

Table 6
Real fault parameters on March 3rd, 2019.

Time 7:00e9:00 9:00e11:00 11:00e13:00 13:00e15:00 15:00e16:00 16:00e17:00

Partial shading (½x; y; r) e [6, 2, 25%] [18, 4, 25%] [30, 8, 25%] [132, 2, 25%] e
Short circuit (nsc ) 0 9 9 9 0 0
ISRL (Rc ) 0 5 5 5 5 0
 Y. Li et al. / Renewable Energy 143 (2019) 52e63 61

Fig. 9. Measured IeV curves on August 1st (a), August 7th (b) and March 3rd (c).

Fig. 11(c), the identification error of nsc is ±1. From Figs. 10(d) and
Fig. 11(d), at most of the time, the identified Rc is basically consis-
tent with the real Rc . However during 7:00e9:00 and 16:00e17:00,
the identified value may also be greater than 0. It is due to the
simulation error of the CFFSM caused by the low irradiance. From
Figs. 10(e) and Fig. 11(e), it can be found that in the morning and
dusk, the RMSE (cost value of the optimum) is greater than that at
noon. It is also caused by the lower irradiance in the morning and
the dusk. From Figs. 10(f) and Fig. 11(f), when partial shadings are
removed, the computing time is basically less than 20 s. When
under partial shading, the computing time is increased but not
greater than one minute. In addition, Fig. 11(f) consumes more time

Fig. 10. Results of the experimental comparison and the performance of the identification process on August 1st, (a) nb , (b) h, (c) nsc , (d) Rc , (e) the cost value of the optimum, (f) the
computing time.
62 Y. Li et al. / Renewable Energy 143 (2019) 52e63

Fig. 11. Results of the experimental comparison and the performance of the identification process on August 7th, (a) nb , (b) h, (c) nsc , (d) Rc , (e) the cost value of the optimum, (f) the
computing time.

than Fig. 10(f) when under partial shading. It is because two
different transmittance shadow blocks in the corresponding time
intervals were set on August 7th, which makes the inputs of the
CFFSM on August 7th be more complex than that on August 1st.
The results of the experiment in early spring (March 3rd) are
analyzed as follow. From Fig. 12(a)e12(c), the diagnosis method
still presents a good performance to detect and describe partial
shading and short circuit although the average irradiance is low.
However, the error of identified Rc is much greater than that of the
summer experiments, which leads the greater RMSE as shown in
Fig. 12(e). It is also due to the simulation error of the CFFSM caused
by the low irradiance.
Therefore, as can be concluded from the above experimental
results, the proposed diagnosis method is able to accurately iden-
tify fault parameters of concurrent partial shading, short circuit and
ISRL. And the diagnosis method has better diagnostic accuracy
under high irradiance compared with low irradiance.

Fig. 12. Results of the experimental comparison and the performance of the identification process on March 3rd, (a) nb , (b) h, (c) nsc , (d) Rc , (e) the cost value of the optimum, (f) the
computing time.
 Y. Li et al. / Renewable Energy 143 (2019) 52e63
6. Conclusion
In this work, a FPI based diagnosis method for PV arrays was
developed.
The first part of this work focused on the unknown parameters
extraction of the ODM. By curve fitting for the extracted data,
functional relationships between unknown parameters with the
measured irradiance were obtained.
Next, the CFFSM was established to simulate the IeV curve of
the PV array either under normal conditions or faulted conditions.
The CFFSM simulates the IV curve of the PV array by superposing
the voltage of PV cells and substrings. Short circuit of substrings
and increased series-resistance losses could be simulated by sub-
tracting the corresponding voltage sequence and the extra voltage
drop, respectively. Moreover, the computational efficiency of the
CFFSM is improved by reducing the execution times of the same
computing tasks.
In the third part, the FPI method was detailed. Equivalent
shadow blocks are used to describe the partial shading. The number
of short-circuited substrings is used to describe the short circuit
fault. The value of increased series-resistance is used to describe the
increased series-resistance losses. By formulating an objective
function, which is the RMSE between the measured IeV curve with
the simulated IeV curve of the CFFSM, and applying DE algorithm,
fault parameters can be identified.
Finally, three days of experiments in summer and early spring
were performed to validate the proposed fault diagnosis method.
The results showed that the identified fault parameters are basi-
cally consistent with the real parameters. The experimental results
also revealed that the proposed diagnosis method is suitable to be
applied to the condition with good irradiance. The computing time
of each identification process is basically less than one minute and
would be much less when no partial shading occurs.
Because the proposed CFFSM does not rely on any circuit-based
simulation software, it makes the proposed diagnosis method more
development-friendly to many practical applications, e.g. embed-
ding it to inverters to integrate an on-line diagnosis system, or
applying it to the professional IeV test instruments to evaluate the
state of PV arrays/modules.
Acknowledgments
The research is supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant No. 51777059), Six Talent Peaks Project
in Jiangsu Province (Grant No. GDZB-006), and Qing Lan Project of
Jiangsu Province.
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