I-V Curve Differences Image Classification by CNN for Failure Factor Determination in PV system

With a widespread of photovoltaic (PV) systems, a long-term use of the systems is expected. Since the amount of power generation can be decreased due to failures by various causes in the system, a practical way to detect the cause of the failure is needed for long-term uses of the system. This paper proposes a method to determine the cause of the failure in the PV system using convolutional neural network (CNN) by classifying the image of measured I-V curves which might have some failures. As a result, a case of the I-V curves which were caused by a stepped defect in a string unit was detected 100% correctly.