ANALYSIS OF BRAZILIAN POWER PLANTS COMMON FAULTS

摘要

Aerial infrared thermography (aIRT) has already proven to be a fast and effective method for detecting and classifying faults in photovoltaic (PV) systems. This paper aims at summarizing the key findings of a flight campaign earried out in Brazil over three multicrystalline silicon PV power plants. It reports common defects found in the various plants showing UAV-captured image data and correlation between visible and IR sensors. The most common defect detected were disconnected substrings, indicating module fabrication defects. The second most common fault was disconnected strings, followed by modules with broken front glass and other types of hot-spots. The results indicate the need for a more detailed quality analysis of the PV modules that are being installed at power plants in Brazil, and also demonstrate the viability of using aIRT as a method for inspection and monitoring of PV power plants.