Monitoring current-voltage characteristics of photovoltaic modules

Author

van Dyk, E.E. ; Gxasheka, A.R. ; Meyer, E.L.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Phys., Port Elizabeth Univ., South Africa

fYear

2002

fDate

19-24 May 2002

Firstpage

1516

Lastpage

1519

Abstract

The aim of the study was to build a system to monitor the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of photovoltaic (PV) modules subjected to outdoor conditions at the University of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The monitoring of I-V characteristics, module temperature, ambient temperature, and irradiance will enable an analysis of module performance, degradation and or failure. In this paper the design of a low-cost system built to sequentially measure I-V characteristics of seven modules at regular intervals is discussed and an analysis of data obtained is presented.

Keywords

electric current measurement; elemental semiconductors; silicon; solar cell arrays; voltage measurement; Si; Si PV modules; South Africa; University of Port Elizabeth; ambient temperature; current-voltage characteristics monitoring; irradiance; low-cost system; module degradation; module failure; module performance; module temperature; outdoor conditions; photovoltaic modules; Africa; Condition monitoring; Current-voltage characteristics; Data analysis; Degradation; Failure analysis; Performance analysis; Photovoltaic systems; Solar power generation; Temperature;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2002. Conference Record of the Twenty-Ninth IEEE

ISSN

1060-8371

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7471-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2002.1190899

Filename

1190899