Although the solar energy industry has experienced rapid growth recently, high-level management of photovoltaic (PV) arrays has remained an open problem. As sensing and monitoring technology continues to improve, there is an opportunity to deploy sensors in PV arrays in order to improve their management. In this book, we examine the potential role of sensing and monitoring technology in a PV context, focusing on the areas of fault detection, topology optimization, and performance evaluation/data visualization. First, several types of commonly occurring PV array faults are considered and detection algorithms are described. Next, the potential for dynamic optimization of an array's topology is discussed, with a focus on mitigation of fault conditions and optimization of power output under non-fault conditions. Finally, monitoring system design considerations such as type and accuracy of measurements, sampling rate, and communication protocols are considered. It is our hope that the benefits of monitoring presented here will be sufficient to offset the small additional cost of a sensing system, and that such systems will become common in the near future. Table of Contents: Introduction / Overview of Photovoltaics / Causes Performance Degradation and Outage / Fault Detection Methods / Array Topology Optimization / Monitoring of PV Systems / Summary
About the Author: Henry Braun completed his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, and is continuing as a Ph.D. student. During an internship at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab working in the computer vision field, he developed a strong interest in information processing and decision making. This interest is reflected in his recent work on automated fault detection in photovoltaic arrays. Other research interest areas include compressive sensing and automatic target recognition and tracking. In addition to NASA, Henry's research sponsors have included Paceco Corp. and Raytheon missile systems. Mahesh K. Banavar is a post-doctoral researcher in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at Arizona State University. He received a B.E. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka, India in 2005, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, both in Electrical Engineering, from Arizona State University in 2007 and 2010, respectively. His research area is Signal Processing and Communications, with specific interest in Wireless Communications, Sensor Networks, Distributed Inference, Localization, and applications of statistical signal processing. He is a member of MENSA and the Eta Kappa Nu honor society.