Generic Fault Cell Model and Cell-based Characteristic Fault Topologies of PV Array

Cells are the sole elements to generate power; their connections, i.e., the cell topology of module, and module topology of array, consist the power collection and transmission network of PV system; therefore, topology is a core part to affect the output of PV array especially in case of some PV cells are having temporary or permanent faults. In this regarding, this paper presents a new generic fault cell model which covers four basic faults. Since the number of physical topologies is a very big number, a new concept of cell-based characteristic fault topology of PV array is also proposed to aggregate the physical topologies. The calculation algorithms considering ergodic calculation and a particular number of fault cells have been developed, with high aggregation efficiency as well as very fast calculation.