Fault-Tolerant Inverters for Reliable Photovoltaic Systems

Photovoltaic (PV) systems are increasingly adopted as a source of green energy. Due to the high economic investment that they usually involve, their reliability is becoming of concern. Recent studies have proven that faults likely to affect the inverters of PV systems in the field can dramatically reduce the energy delivered to the load. We first present a self-checking monitor to detect faults affecting the inverter in the field, as well as faults affecting the monitor itself. Then, we propose a hardware reconfiguration scheme that activated upon the monitor's generation of an alarm message after the occurrence of faults, enables to avoid their impact on the energy efficiency of the PV system. Our recovery scheme is also self-checking with respect to faults affecting itself. Therefore, our monitoring and reconfiguration schemes provide inverters with fault-tolerance ability, thus enabling to meet the increasing demand for reliable PV systems.