Real-Time Nuisance Fault Detection in Photovoltaic Generation Systems Using a Fine Tree Classifier

Nuisance faults are caused by weather events, which result in solar farms being disconnected from the electricity grid. This results in long stretches of downtime for troubleshooting as data are mined manually for possible fault causes, and consequently, cost thousands of dollars in lost revenue and...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Collin Barker, Sam Cipkar, Tyler Lavigne, Cameron Watson, Maher Azzouz
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-02-01
Series:Sustainability
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/2235
Description
Summary:Nuisance faults are caused by weather events, which result in solar farms being disconnected from the electricity grid. This results in long stretches of downtime for troubleshooting as data are mined manually for possible fault causes, and consequently, cost thousands of dollars in lost revenue and maintenance. This paper proposes a novel fault detection technique to identify nuisance faults in solar farms. To initialize the design process, a weather model and solar farm model are designed to generate both training and testing data. Through an iterative design process, a fine tree model with a classification accuracy of 96.7% is developed. The proposed model is successfully implemented and tested in real-time through a server and web interface. The testbed is capable of streaming in data from a separate source, which emulates a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) or weather station, then classifies the data in real-time and displays the output on another computer (which imitates an operator control room).
ISSN:2071-1050