Solar Energy 176 (2018) 10–21

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Solar Energy
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Two-stage power–based fault detection scheme for photovoltaic systems T

⁎
Aria Khoshnami, Iman Sadeghkhani
Smart Microgrid Research Center, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad 85141-43131, Iran
Department of Electrical Engineering, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad 85141-43131, Iran

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: With the high penetration of photovoltaic (PV) systems, fault detection scheme is of great importance for the
Fault detection distribution network operation. The low fault current makes the detection of low-irradiance, low-mismatch, and
Photovoltaic (PV) array high-impedance faults a challenging task, especially for PV systems with active maximum power point tracking
Super-imposed component algorithm and equipped with blocking diodes. Energy loss and potential fire hazard are some consequences of an
Partial shading
undetected fault within the PV array. This paper presents a DC-side fault detection scheme for PV systems that
Protection
consists of two stages. Using the amplitude of the normalized super-imposed component of PV array power, the
first stage detects a disturbance while the second stage distinguishes a fault condition from partial shading using
a wave-shape based feature. The proposed scheme can properly detect string-to-string, string-to-ground, and
open-circuit faults under different fault conditions without the need for the prior information about the PV array
and the training data set and is effective for both grid-connected and islanded PV systems. The reliable per-
formance of the proposed fault detection scheme is assessed on the simulation models of two PV arrays.

1. Introduction
Photovoltaic (PV) systems are gaining significant attention due to
accessibility, government incentives, and advances in PV modules
(Chen and Wang, in press; Fani et al., 2018). However, protection of PV
systems against string-to-string (SS), string-to-ground (SG), and open-
circuit (OC) faults is one of the main barriers to realizing economic and
environmental-friendly PV systems. An effective protection system can
prevent potential fire hazards, power and revenues losses, and system
shutdown (Kumar et al., 2018; Chen et al., 2018; Garoudja et al., 2017).
The large fault current of PV systems can be detected by the available
protective devices of PV systems such as fuses and residual current
detectors. However, when the solar irradiation and/or fault mismatch is
low and the fault resistance is high, the flowing fault current is not large
enough to be detected by current-based protection devices (Yi and
Etemadi, 2017a; Saleh et al., in press). Fault detection will be more
difficult if the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm works
(Yi and Etemadi, 2017b). Thus, the protection system of PV arrays
should be equipped with an effective fault detection strategy to improve
the resilience offered by the PV systems.
Injecting a signal and observing the response is the basis of a group
of PV fault detection schemes. Using the spread spectrum time domain
reflectometry (SSTDR) method, Alam et al. (2013) detects the PV
ground fault. The fault detection scheme presented in Takashima et al.
(2008) applies a voltage signal and observes its reflected signal using
TDR method to detect the short-circuit (SC) and OC faults. However,
these schemes require function generator and the PV system equipment
and configuration may degrade their performance. Performance com-
parison is the basis of second category of fault detection schemes. Kuo
et al. (2017) presents a fractional-order color relation classifier to detect
the PV faults that compares the maximum power estimated by MPPT
algorithm and the meter-read power. Using a smart multi-sensor ar-
chitecture, And et al. (2015) analyzes the predicted and measured ef-
ficiency to detect PV faults. By comparing theoretical and measured
output powers, Dhimish and Holmes (2016) identifies PV faults using t-
test statistical technique. The fault detection schemes presented in
Platon et al. (2015, 2011) work based on the comparison of the mea-
sured and estimated AC power output. Lin et al. (2014) identifies the
occurrence of a fault by comparing the power loss with its threshold.
Using the magnitude and derivatives of the voltage measured by two
voltage transducers per string, Saleh et al. (in press) detects the fault
conditions. Kumar et al. (2018) identifies fault condition using wavelet
packet transforms by comparing the change in the array voltage, energy
of the array voltage, and energy for the change in the impedance with
the specified thresholds. However, the need for frequent updating of PV
model due to array aging and season change, the differences between
the simulated and actual PV models, the similarity between operation
under low irradiance/partial shading and low mismatch fault condition,

⁎
Corresponding author at: Smart Microgrid Research Center, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad 85141-43131, Iran.
E-mail address: sadeghkhani@pel.iaun.ac.ir (I. Sadeghkhani).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2018.10.014
Received 26 May 2018; Received in revised form 15 September 2018; Accepted 5 October 2018
Available online 11 October 2018
0038-092X/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A. Khoshnami, I. Sadeghkhani Solar Energy 176 (2018) 10–21

pu
Nomenclature pPV,SI super-imposed component of normalized PV array power
′ pu
pPV,SI absolute value of amplified super-imposed component of
ε disturbance detection threshold normalized PV array
GFPD ground fault protection device PV photovoltaic
HIF high-impedance fault Rf fault resistance
IED intelligent electronic device SC short-circuit
IMPP current at maximum power point SG string-to-ground
iPV PV current SLS absolute value of the left side slope of maximum point of
pu
iPV normalized PV current super-imposed power curve
ISC short-circuit current SRS absolute value of the right side slope of maximum point of
k sampling step super-imposed power curve
kamp amplifier gain SS string-to-string
LPF low pass filter SSTDR spread spectrum time domain reflectometry
MPPT maximum power point tracking STC standard test condition
N length of moving data window Td time delay of Delta filter
N0 first point of the moving window Ts sampling period
Nm middle point of the moving window VMPP voltage at maximum power point
OC open-circuit VOC open-circuit voltage
P&O perturb and observe v PV PV voltage
pu pu
pPV normalized array power vPV normalized PV voltage
pu
pPV,F fault component of normalized PV array power VSI voltage-sourced inverter
pu
pPV,N normal-running component of normalized PV array power

and the need for a lot of costly sensors limit the applicability of this
fault detection group. Using machine learning techniques is the basis of
the third group of fault detection schemes. Akram and Lotfifard (2015)
employs the probabilistic neural network to identify the SS and OC
faults. Using a three-layered artificial neural network, Syafaruddin et al.
(2011) estimates the module voltage to detect the fault condition. Yi
and Etemadi (2017a,b) extract the features using the multi-resolution
signal decomposition to make the decision by a fuzzy interface system
and a two-stage support vector machine, respectively. Zhao et al. (2012,
2015) detect the fault condition using the decision tree based and the
graph-based semi-supervised learning based algorithms, respectively.
However, the need for a training data set obtained under various op-
erating conditions is the main drawback of these schemes.
Among the presented fault detection scheme in the literature, few
methods such as Kumar et al. (2018, 2017a,b) study the low-irradiance
low-mismatch high-impedance faults during the operation of MPPT as
the challenging fault conditions. However, these schemes either require
a set of training data or are effective for a certain PV array. To address
this problem, the paper presents a two-stage fault detection algorithm
using the available data of array voltage and current. The first stage
discriminates a disturbance from the normal condition by calculating
the normalized super-imposed component of PV array power. Then, the
second stage differentiates the fault condition from partial shading
based on the wave-shape of super-imposed power. The proposed
scheme is capable of detecting SS, SG, and OC faults. It can properly
detect the low-irradiance, high-impedance, and low-mismatch faults
even when the MPPT algorithm is active or blocking diodes are in-
stalled in the PV array. The proposed fault detection algorithm is ef-
fective for both grid-connected and islanded PV systems without the
need for a set of training data and prior information about PV array. To
the best of our knowledge, the fault detection in an islanded PV system
with voltage control has not been adequately addressed.

Fig. 1. Layout of the study PV system.

11
A. Khoshnami, I. Sadeghkhani
Fig. 2. Characteristic curves of a PV array under various solar irradiations.
Fig. 3. (a) PV array power during fault, (b) PV array super-imposed power during fault, (c) PV array power during partial shading, and (d) PV array super-imposed
power during partial shading.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the typical PV
array configuration and the challenging fault detection conditions. The
two-stage fault detection strategy is proposed in Section 3. Section 4 is
dedicated to case studies, followed by a discussion in Section 5. Finally,
Section 6 concludes the paper.
2. PV system model and fault detection challenges
2.1. PV array configuration
A typical grid-connected PV system is shown in Fig. 1, which con-
sists of a PV array and DC-DC and DC-AC converters. A 5 × 5, 7.6 kW PV
array with 305.2 W SunPower modules is studied in this paper. The
open-circuit voltage VOC , short-circuit current ISC , voltage at maximum
power point VMPP , and current at maximum power point IMPP of study
PV module under standard test condition (STC, 1000 W/m2 irradiation
and 25 °C temperature) are 64.2 V, 5.96 A, 54.7 V, and 5.58 A, re-
spectively. The DC-DC converter is a 500 V boost one controlled by the
MPPT algorithm in the grid-connected mode or by the voltage and
current control loops in the autonomous mode. The DC-AC converter is
a centralized three-phase three-level voltage-sourced inverter (VSI)
controlled by the external and internal control loops; the former
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Solar Energy 176 (2018) 10–21
regulates the DC link voltage while the latter controls the real and re-
active components of the grid current. The VSI is connected to a 25 kV
distribution feeder using a Δ /Yg transformer. The PV modules are
protected using fuses. Using a ground fault protection device (GFPD),
the PV array is protected against the large ground fault current.
The current-voltage and power-voltage characteristic curves of the
study PV array under various solar irradiations are shown in Fig. 2. To
extract the maximum power from the grid-connected PV array in var-
ious operating conditions, the perturb and observe (P&O) method
(Ahmed et al., 2013) is employed as the MPPT algorithm. When the
utility grid faces a disturbance, the PV system may operate in islanded
operation to supply the critical loads. Also, the PV systems can auton-
omously operate to electrify the remote locations such as rural areas
and space satellites. In these operating conditions, the boost converter
is not usually controlled by the MPPT algorithm since the power gen-
eration and load consumption should match. Using the voltage and
current control loops is a typical control system to regulate the output
voltage of an islanded DC-DC converter (Guerrero et al., 2011).
2.2. Challenging fault detection conditions
An SG fault occurs when one PV array node comes in contact with
A. Khoshnami, I. Sadeghkhani
Fig. 4. Flowchart of the proposed two-stage fault detection algorithm.
the ground and an SS fault is the result of the unintentional connection
of two PV nodes. The severity of a fault is represented by the mismatch
percentage which is defined as the percentage of PV modules between
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Solar Energy 176 (2018) 10–21
Fig. 5. Performance of the proposed fault detection algorithm for a 60% mis-
match string-to-string fault with fault resistance of 0.5 Ω under STC; (a) am-
plified super-imposed power, (b) fault detection signal.
Fig. 6. Performance of the proposed fault detection algorithm for a 20% mis-
match string-to-string fault with fault resistance of 10 Ω under solar irradiance
of 400 W/m2; (a) amplified super-imposed power, (b) fault detection signal.
two short-circuited points of strings (that these points can be in the
same or different strings) for SS faults or that of between a string point
and ground for SG faults with respect to the total number of string
modules. F1 in Fig. 1 is an SG fault with 20% mismatch since the fault
involves one out of five modules. F2 connects two different strings with
40% mismatch (two out of five involved) while F3 makes a short-circuit
across three modules in the same string resulting in a 60% mismatch SS
fault. When an SS or SG fault occurs within the PV array, the voltage of
faulty string drops that may draw a large back-feeding current from
other strings. Fuses and GFPD can protect the PV array against the
normal fault conditions (Yi and Etemadi, 2017a). However, when the
fault current is lower than 2.1 times the PV string SC current under STC
as the fuse current threshold (Yi and Etemadi, 2017b), the fault con-
dition remains undetected. Low-irradiance, high-impedance, and low-
A. Khoshnami, I. Sadeghkhani
Fig. 7. Performance of the proposed fault detection algorithm for various string-to-string faults within the grid-connected 5 × 5 PV array; (a) irradiance of 300 W/m2,
(b) irradiance of 700 W/m2, (c) irradiance of 1000 W/m2.
mismatch faults, faults in PV array with active MPPT, and faults in PV
array equipped with blocking diodes may not result in large back-
feeding fault current. When a fault occurs in a PV array, the OC voltage
decreases since the characteristic curves change to the new curves. In
an MPPT-equipped PV array, the array current increases to extract the
maximum power in new operating condition. It decreases the back-
feeding current, making the fault detection more difficult. In the case of
installing the blocking diodes in PV strings to block the back-feeding
current, even the severe fault condition is not detected by the fuse. The
power loss and possibility of failure are another disadvantages of these
diodes (Yi and Etemadi, 2017a). It should be noted that employing the
bypass diodes for protecting the PV modules against hot spot under
partial shading does not seriously affect the performance of fault de-
tection schemes as these diodes are reversed biased during normal
operating condition.
3. Proposed two-stage fault detection algorithm
Section 2.2 shows that the performance of the fault detection
schemes degrades in the case of high-impedance, low-irradiance, low-
14
Solar Energy 176 (2018) 10–21
mismatch faults; also, by using MPPT algorithm and blocking diodes,
the fault detection becomes more challenging. To address the problem,
this paper proposes a two-stage fault detection algorithm based on the
available data of array voltage and current. In the first stage, the super-
imposed component of PV output power is monitored to detect the
disturbance. During normal condition, this component is zero; however,
when a disturbance occurs within the PV array, it changes in-
stantaneously. Then, the second stage differentiates the fault condition
from the partial shading. The proposed two-stage fault detection algo-
rithm is described as follows.
3.1. Stage 1: disturbance detection
In the first step of stage 1, the noises of measured array voltage and
current are mitigated using the low pass filters (LPFs). As shown in
Fig. 1, an intelligent electronic device (IED) is employed to process the
measurements. IED samples the filtered voltage and current with a
sampling period of Ts = 1 ms. Then, the sampled PV voltage v PV and
current iPV are normalized to increase the scalability of the proposed
algorithm as
A. Khoshnami, I. Sadeghkhani Solar Energy 176 (2018) 10–21

Fig. 8. Performance of the proposed fault detection algorithm for various string-to-ground faults within the grid-connected 5 × 5 PV array; (a) irradiance of 300 W/
m2, (b) irradiance of 700 W/m2, (c) irradiance of 1000 W/m2.

pu pu pu
pu v PV (kTs ) pPV,SI (kTs ) = pPV (kTs )−pPV (kTs−Td ), (5)
vPV (kTs ) = ,
VOC (1)
where Td is the time delay of Delta filter. To magnify the array power
i (kT ) change in the case of challenging fault conditions, this paper detects the
pu
iPV (kTs ) = PV s ,
ISC (2) array disturbances using the amplified super-imposed power as
where k is the sampling step. The array power is calculated as ′ pu (kTs ) = kamp × |pPV,SI
pPV,SI pu
(kTs )|, (6)
pu pu pu
pPV (kTs ) = vPV (kTs ) × iPV (kTs ). (3)
′ pu (kTs ) is the absolute value of amplified super-imposed
where pPV,SI
Subsequent to a disturbance within the PV array, the array power component of normalized PV array and kamp is the amplifier gain.
changes with respect to its pre-disturbance value. This change is known The proposed algorithm monitors the magnified super-imposed
as the super-imposed component. This component keeps the dis- component of the PV array. During the normal operation, pPV,SI ′ pu is
turbance signature and is independent of the normal-running compo- nearly zero while in the case of occurring a disturbance within the PV
nent. During a disturbance, the array power is the sum of normal- array, this component has a non-zero value that can be used as the
running and super-imposed components (Zamani et al., 2012) as ′ pu > ε , where ε is the
disturbance detection criterion. Hence, if pPV,SI
pu
pPV,F pu
(kTs ) = pPV,N pu
(kTs ) + pPV,SI (kTs ), disturbance detection threshold, this condition is detected as a dis-
(4)
turbance. The threshold is necessary to prevent misoperation of the
pu pu pu
where pPV,F , and
pPV,N , are the fault, normal-running, and super-
pPV,SI proposed scheme for remained noises in measurements with nearly zero
imposed components of the normalized PV array power. Using the Delta amplified amplitude. On the other hand, although the normal weather
filter (Benmouy and Roberts, 1999), the super-imposed component of disturbances change the PV power, the speed of these variations are
PV array can be calculated as such low that the fault-imposed component has a nearly zero value. The

15
A. Khoshnami, I. Sadeghkhani
Fig. 9. Performance of the proposed fault detection algorithm for various high-
impedance faults with fault resistance of 30 Ω ; (a) string-to-string faults, (b)
string-to-ground faults.
Fig. 10. Performance of the proposed fault detection algorithm for various
high-impedance faults with fault resistance of 30 Ω within an aged PV array; (a)
string-to-string faults, (b) string-to-ground faults.
threshold ε prevents the normal weather changes are detected as the
disturbances that it reduces the computational burden of the stage 2 of
the proposed method.
3.2. Stage 2: decision making
The main disturbances of PV arrays are faults and partial shading.
′ pu significantly. Thus, this feature only
Both disturbances can change pPV,SI
can differentiate a disturbance from the normal condition and the type
of disturbance remains unknown. To distinguish the fault condition
from partial shading, this paper proposes a wave-shape based feature.
The basis of this feature is the rate of change of array power. Fig. 3
shows the PV power and absolute value of its super-imposed component
during the fault and partial shading conditions. When a disturbance
occurs within a PV array, the array power changes from the pre-
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Solar Energy 176 (2018) 10–21
Fig. 11. Performance of the proposed fault detection algorithm for open-circuit
faults under irradiations of 1000 and 300 W/m2; (a) amplified super-imposed
power, (b) fault detection signal.
disturbance value to a new steady-state value with time duration Δt .
Thus, its super-imposed component starts from zero to a maximum
value with the time duration of Δt1 while it comes back to zero value
after the time duration of Δt2 . When a fault occurs, the super-imposed
component instantaneously reaches the maximum value and Δt1 < Δt2 .
During a partial shading, the super-imposed component gradually
reaches the maximum value and Δt1 may be larger than Δt2 . It is due to
this fact that the dynamic model of a PV cell includes a shunt resistor in
parallel with a small leakage capacitor. It leads to a first order natural
transient response for the fault condition Saleh et al. (in press). Hence,
the fault condition results in an exponential waveform. However, a
partial shading leads to a sigmoid-like “S” shaped curve. Consequently,
during transfer from the pre-disturbance operating point to the post-
disturbance steady-state operating point of PV power, the rate of
change of super-imposed component in the first instants of a fault is
greater than that of a partial shading while the rate of change of super-
imposed component in the last instants of a fault is lesser than that of a
partial shading.
To discriminate a fault condition from a partial shading, the stage 2
of the proposed fault detection algorithm monitors pPV,SI′ pu in a moving
data window of N points, where N is an odd number. Fig. 3(b) and (d)
show that in the case of a fault condition, the slope of the super-im-
posed power curve in the left side of the maximum point is larger than
that of in the right side and vice versa for partial shading. In the first
step, the moving window in that the middle point is the maximum is
considered. Then, the left and right side slopes of maximum point of
super-imposed power curve are calculated as
′ pu (Nm)−pPV,SI
pPV,SI ′ pu (N0)
SLS = ,
(N −1)/2 × Ts (7)
′ pu (N )−pPV,SI
pPV,SI ′ pu (Nm)
SRS = ,
(N −1)/2 × Ts (8)
where SLS and SRS are the absolute values of the left and right side
slopes of maximum point of super-imposed power curve, respectively.
N0 and Nm are the first and middle points of the moving window, re-
spectively.
The flowchart of the proposed two-stage fault detection algorithm is
shown in Fig. 4. By comparing the super-imposed component of PV
array power and the threshold ε , the disturbance is detected in stage 1.
Then, a fault condition is verified if SLS > SRS . Otherwise, the
A. Khoshnami, I. Sadeghkhani
Fig. 12. Performance of the proposed fault detection algorithm for various string-to-string faults for the study PV array equipped with blocking diodes; (a) irradiance
of 300 W/m2, (b) irradiance of 700 W/m2, (c) irradiance of 1000 W/m2.
disturbance is a partial shading.
3.3. Parameters selection
The parameters of the proposed scheme are selected as follows.
– Selection of N: The length of the moving window is a key parameter
affecting the performance of this scheme; a shorter window in-
creases the process speed but decreases the accuracy. Thus, there is
a compromise between fault detection speed and accuracy. The
study results show that the length of 19 samples is a proper choice to
achieve the acceptable speed and accuracy.
– Selection of Td : The delay of Delta filter does not significantly affect
the performance of the proposed method. Various delays result in
different amplitudes for the super-imposed component; since the
decision making of the proposed method is based on the wave-shape
of the super-imposed component, the value of Td does not sig-
nificantly affect the accuracy of the fault detection. In this work, the
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Solar Energy 176 (2018) 10–21
time delay of 5 ms is adopted.
– Selection of ε : The threshold is necessary to prevent misoperation of
the proposed scheme for the remained noises in measurements with
nearly zero amplified amplitude. Also, it prevents the normal
weather changes are detected as the disturbances that it reduces the
computational burden of the stage 2 of the proposed method. By few
simulation results, the value of 0.5 pu is adopted as the proper
disturbance detection threshold since the amplified super-imposed
PV power is below this value during normal operation.
– Selection of kamp : The amplifier gain is necessary since the normal-
ized super-imposed PV power has a very small value. The presence
of remained noises may result in the low super-imposed component
cannot be a reliable criterion for disturbance detection. The study
results show that kamp of 1000 is an acceptable value for proper
performance of the proposed fault detection scheme.
A. Khoshnami, I. Sadeghkhani
Fig. 13. Performance of the proposed fault detection algorithm for various string-to-ground faults for the study PV array equipped with blocking diodes; (a)
irradiance of 300 W/m2, (b) irradiance of 700 W/m2, (c) irradiance of 1000 W/m2.
4. Performance evaluation
This section is dedicated to evaluating the performance of the pro-
posed fault detection strategy. The 5 × 5, 7.5 kW PV array of Fig. 1 is
simulated using MATLAB/Simulink. Several case studies including SC
and OC faults, HIFs, and partial shading are performed under various
operating conditions for both grid-connected and islanded PV system.
The time delay of Delta filter Td , the length of moving data window N,
the amplifier gain kamp , and the disturbance detection threshold ε are
selected equal to 5 ms, 19, 1000, and 0.5, respectively.
4.1. Case 1: string-to-string fault
The objective of the first case study is to investigate the effectiveness
of the proposed two-stage fault detection scheme during SS faults. A
severe SS fault with 60% mismatch and fault resistance of Rf = 0.5 Ω
under STC is simulated at t = 0.5 s. Fig. 5 shows the super-imposed
power during this fault condition. It increases to 139.5 with the time
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Solar Energy 176 (2018) 10–21
duration of Δt1 = 17 ms and comes back to nearly zero after the time
duration of Δt2 = 61 ms. The disturbance detection time is 1.1 ms. After
the disturbance detection in stage 1, the SLS and SRS are calculated in
stage 2; SLS is equal to 6514.4 while SRS is equal to 2811.1. Since
SLS > SRS , this disturbance is properly classified as a fault condition.
The fault detection time is 27 ms.
To evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme during a
challenging fault condition, an SS fault with 20% mismatch, 10 Ω fault
resistance, and 400 W/m2 irradiance is simulated at t = 0.5 s. Fig. 6(a)
′ pu increases to 4.7 and violates the threshold. Then, this
shows that pPV,SI
difficult fault detection condition is classified as a fault condition by
stage 2 at t = 0.522 s, as shown in Fig. 6(b). Fig. 7 shows the perfor-
mance of the proposed fault detection scheme for SS faults with various
irradiances, mismatches, and fault resistances. The results verify the
effectiveness of the proposed scheme in detecting SS faults.
4.2. Case 2: string-to-ground fault
To evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme for SG faults,
A. Khoshnami, I. Sadeghkhani Solar Energy 176 (2018) 10–21

This effect results in the gradual loss of performance over many years.
Jordan et al. (2015) shows that in a 20-year-old (from 1994 to 2014)
crystalline silicon system, the open-circuit voltage, short-circuit cur-
rent, maximum power, and fill factor reduce by about 3%, 4%, 11%,
and 5%, respectively. To evaluate the performance of the proposed
algorithm in the cases of various HIF conditions within an aged PV
array, VOC, ISC , and MPP under STC are reduced to 62.2 V, 5.72 A, and
271.5 W, respectively. Fig. 10 shows the performance evaluation of the
proposed fault detection scheme for various SS and SG HIFs. The results
verify that the proper performance of the proposed method is in-
dependent of the PV model parameters.

4.4. Case 4: open circuit fault

This case study is dedicated to investigating the performance of the

Fig. 14. Performance of the proposed fault detection algorithm for 25% partial
shading; (a) amplified super-imposed power, (b) fault detection signal.
proposed fault detection scheme during OC faults. To this end, the
middle of one PV string is opened at t = 0.5 s under two irradiance le-
vels of 1000 and 300 W/m2. Fig. 11 shows that both disturbances are
detected by stage 1 and are classified as the fault conditions by stage 2.
It verifies the effectiveness of the proposed two-stage scheme for de-
tecting OC faults.
4.5. Case 5: fault in PV array with string blocking diodes

various fault conditions with irradiances of 300, 700, and 1000 W/m2,
fault mismatches of 20%, 40%, and 80%, and fault resistances of 0.1, 2,
and 10 Ω are simulated in the study test system. The study results are
shown in Fig. 8. For all SG faults, the super-imposed power violates the
disturbance detection threshold and the fault conditions are properly
detected by the proposed scheme.
4.3. Case 3: high impedance fault
Installation of blocking diodes is recommended by some experts to
protect the PV system by blocking the back-feeding current (Yi and
Etemadi, 2017a). As mentioned in Section 2.2, these diodes may de-
grade the effectiveness of the fault detection schemes. To evaluate the
performance of the proposed scheme, various SS and SG faults are si-
mulated in the test study system equipped with blocking diodes.
Figs. 12 and 13 show the simulation results. All fault conditions are
properly detected by the proposed scheme even when the back-feeding
current is blocked by the installed diode.

HIF is a special form of SG faults. Insulation failure of cables, in-
cidental short circuit between normal conductor and ground, and
ground-faults within PV modules are the causes of an SG fault Zhao and
Lyons (2017). The fault path may consist of impedances resulting from
poor contact, DC arcs, and highly resistive surfaces such as sand, soil,
asphalt, grass, etc. Zhao et al. (2013), resulting in an SG fault with the
high impedance that is identified as HIF. The low amplitude of the fault
current is the main characteristic of this type of fault which is usually
insufficient to sensitize a current-based protective device and conse-
quently, HIF detection is a challenging task Lima et al. (2018). The
objective of this scenario is to investigate the sensitivity of the proposed
scheme during this type of fault. To this end, various SG HIFs as well as
SS faults with high impedance under different solar irradiations are
simulated. The fault resistance of 30 Ω is considered in this scenario.
Fig. 9 shows that for all simulated HIFs, the disturbance threshold is
violated and these difficult fault conditions are detected by the pro-
posed scheme.
PV systems are planned to operate for many years; hence, they are
prone to the effects of aging (Vasi et al., 2010; Fernandes et al., 2016).
4.6. Case 6: partial shading
Nearby buildings, passing clouds, and bird droppings partially shade
the PV array (Kumar et al., 2018; Guo et al., 2012) that may result in
misoperation of the fault detection schemes. When the partial shading
occurs, the shaded cells become reverse bias. However, a positive cur-
rent forced by the other cells flows in the shaded cells (Ghanbari, 2017).
It results in power dissipation in shaded cells and consequently, the cell
temperature increases, known as the hot spot. Hot spots early degrade
the PV panels. One of the anti-hot spot methods is to install the bypass
diodes in parallel with PV modules. These diodes conduct the positive
current forced by the no-shaded modules to prevent the hot spot. This
scenario is dedicated to investigating the classification accuracy of the
proposed two-stage scheme. In this case, it is assumed that a moving
cloud shades 6 modules of the study test system, as shown in Fig. 1. This
partial shading is simulated by decreasing the solar irradiance of these
modules from 1000 W/m2 to 200 W/m2 during 0.1 s, as a severe
shading. Fig. 14(a) shows the change of super-imposed power during
′ pu
this scenario that violates the disturbance detection threshold. pPV,SI

Table 1
Performance of proposed fault detection scheme for 5 × 5 PV array in islanded mode of operation.
Fault Type Irradiance (W/m2) Mismatch = 20% Mismatch = 40% Mismatch = 80%

Rf = 0.1 Ω Rf = 2 Ω Rf = 10 Ω Rf = 0.1 Ω Rf = 2 Ω Rf = 10 Ω Rf = 0.1 Ω Rf = 2 Ω Rf = 10 Ω

SS 300 15.57 15.96 5.33 13.88 14.35 15.90 10.45 10.97 13.53
700 17.1 16.82 2.55 15.30 16.32 13.66 11.48 12.60 16.65
1000 17.74 17.54 0 15.96 17.28 5.39 11.92 12.91 17.76

SG 300 15.57 15.96 5.33 13.88 14.35 15.90 10.45 10.97 13.53
700 17.1 16.82 2.55 15.30 16.32 13.66 11.48 12.60 16.65
1000 17.74 17.54 0 15.96 17.28 5.39 11.92 12.91 17.76

19
A. Khoshnami, I. Sadeghkhani Solar Energy 176 (2018) 10–21

Table 2
Performance of proposed fault detection scheme for 10 × 10 PV array in grid-connected mode of operation.
Fault Type Irradiance (W/m2) Mismatch = 10% Mismatch = 40% Mismatch = 70%

Rf = 0.1 Ω Rf = 5 Ω Rf = 15 Ω Rf = 0.1 Ω Rf = 5 Ω Rf = 15 Ω Rf = 0.1 Ω Rf = 5 Ω Rf = 15 Ω

SS 300 0.97 0.76 0 22.27 13.86 6.29 37.78 30.84 14.93

700 1.83 1.42 0.77 28.77 15.13 6.70 82.94 38.38 15.62
1000 2.27 2.03 1.07 33.37 15.62 6.94 108.30 38.71 15.76

SG 300 1.16 0.74 0.54 30.27 10.31 5.69 37.88 29.71 14.06
700 2.08 1.24 0.70 37.63 14.25 6.71 82.65 35.88 15.31
1000 3.46 1.43 0.74 39.56 14.35 6.56 107.60 37.13 15.04

Table 3
Comparison between proposed fault detection scheme and some existing algorithms.
Chen et al. Kumar et al. Yi and Etemadi Yi and Etemadi Saleh et al. (in Dhimish et al. Proposed Scheme
(2018) (2018) (2017b) (2017a) press) (2017)

Is SS fault considered? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Is SG fault considered? Yes No No Yes Yes No Yes
Is OC fault considered? No No No No Yes No Yes
Is HIF considered? No No Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Is blocking diode considered? No No Yes Yes No No Yes
Is islanded operation considered? No No No No No No Yes
Is no climate measurement Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes
required?
Is no training data set required? Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes
Are various PV sizes considered? No No Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Are few sensors required? Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes

increases to its maximum value of 24.44 with time duration of Δt1 = 102
ms while it comes back to nearly zero after the time duration of
Δt2 = 172 ms. The calculated SLS and SRS are 7.8 and 241.1, respec-
tively. Since SLS < SRS , this disturbance properly classified as a partial
shading and the fault detection signal remains zero, as shown in
Fig. 14(b).
4.7. Case 7: fault within islanded PV array
When a disturbance occurs in the main grid, the PV system may be
disconnected and supplies the critical loads in the islanded mode of
operation. Also, the installation of autonomous PV systems to electrify
the remote areas is increasing. In this scenario, the study PV system is
disconnected from the utility grid and feeds its local DC load. In this
condition, several SS and SG faults under various irradiations, mis-
matches, and fault resistances are simulated within the PV array.
Table 1 shows the simulation results. For most fault conditions, the
super-imposed power violates the disturbance detection threshold and
the fault condition is properly detected. The detection accuracy for this
scenario is 96.3%; only, 2 out of 54 simulated faults are not detected as
a disturbance. The above results confirm the effectiveness of the pro-
posed fault detection scheme for both islanded and grid-connected PV
systems.
5. Discussion
To make a comparison and to validate the scalability of the pro-
posed fault detection scheme, a 23.5 kW, 10 × 10 PV array with 235 W
SunPower modules is studied. The PV module data under STC are as
follows: VOC = 36.96 V, ISC = 8.48 A, VMPP = 29.42 V, and IMPP = 7.99 A.
Various SS and SG faults with 10%, 40%, and 70% mismatches and 0.1,
5, and 15 Ω fault resistances under 300, 700, and 1000 W/m2 solar
irradiations are simulated. Table 2 presents the calculated super-im-
′ pu violates the threshold and
posed power. For most fault conditions, pPV,SI
the faults are properly detected. The accuracy of the proposed scheme
for simulated SS faults with fault resistance of 0.1 and 5 Ω is 100%
while for SS faults with the fault resistance of 15 Ω, it achieves the
accuracy of 88.9%. Compared to recent works on detecting the fault
condition in a 10 × 10 PV array, the accuracy of Yi and Etemadi (2017b)
in detecting the 10% mismatch SS faults for fault resistances of 0, 5, and
15 Ω are 66.77%, 41.67%, and 33.33%, respectively; while, Yi and
Etemadi (2017a) detects similar fault conditions with the accuracy of
76.85%, 67.59%, and 51.85% respectively.
A comparison between the proposed two-stage scheme with recently
published fault detection algorithms is presented in Table 3. The main
difference is that this paper investigates the performance of its proposed
scheme for different fault types under various operating conditions. The
main features of the proposed method are as follows.
• Simplicity: The proposed technique only requires the array voltage
and current which are available measurements in all PV systems and
it removes the need for numerous costly sensors. Also, the compu-
tational processes are performed using a central IED. Hence, there is
no need for the communication link to detect the fault conditions.
• Scalability: The proposed method is based on the normalized super-
imposed components. Also, it does not require a fault detection
threshold (the threshold ε only is necessary to prevent misoperation
of the proposed scheme for the remained noises in measurements).
Moreover, it does not need for a set of training data and prior in-
formation about PV array. Thus, the proposed scheme can be im-
plemented in various PV arrays.
• Sensitivity: The proposed scheme is able to detect the challenging
fault conditions, i.e., low-irradiance, low-mismatch, and high-im-
pedance faults in which the fault current is low and may not be
detected by the conventional protective devices.
• Flexibility: The proposed scheme presents proper fault detection
performance for both grid-connected and islanded PV systems.
6. Conclusion
Fault detection of a PV system is of great importance to prevent
energy loss and fire hazard. This paper proposed a two-stage scheme
which is effective for low-irradiance, low-mismatch, and high-im-
pedance faults. Using a central IED, the array voltage and current

20
A. Khoshnami, I. Sadeghkhani
measurements are processed to calculate the super-imposed component
of array power. The first stage of the proposed scheme detects a dis-
turbance by monitoring the amplitude of the super-imposed power.
This study showed that the wave-shape of super-imposed power for a
fault condition is different from that for partial shading. In the former
condition, the slope of the super-imposed power waveform in the left
side of the maximum point is greater than that in the right side of the
maximum point and vice versa for the latter condition. This wave-shape
based feature is employed in the second stage of the proposed algorithm
to differentiate a fault condition from a partial shading. The proposed
scheme is capable of detecting SS, SG, and OC faults with various lo-
cation mismatches and fault resistances under different solar irradia-
tions without the need for numerous costly sensors. It is effective for PV
arrays with active MPPT and equipped with blocking diodes and pre-
sents promising performance for both grid-connected and islanded PV
systems. The proposed scheme has plug and play capability since it does
not need for a set of training data and prior information about PV array.
Several fault scenarios performed on the 5 × 5 and 10 × 10 PV arrays
verify the sensitivity and scalability of the proposed two-stage fault
detection algorithm.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to send sincere thanks to Dr. Bahador Fani
for his valuable help.
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