Monitoring, Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Techniques for Increasing the Lifetime/Reliability of Photovoltaic Systems

The articles in this special section focus on photovoltaic power systems (PVS). The market for photovoltaic power systems has increased exponentially, but the government subsidies have been reduced dramatically in recent years. The return of the investment mainly relies on selling the energy produced during the PV plant lifetime. Thus, the PV system must be designed and controlled properly in order to ensure its lifetime and reliability but also new features are required: 1) real-time monitoring of the energy production; 2) on-site diagnostic functions; and 3) estimation of the residual life. The degradation of electronic components and PV cells can be accelerated by various unpredictable and unavoidable phenomena.