Investigation of PV Solar Panel I-V Characteristics for Real-time Hot-spot Detection System

Abstract

This paper proposes an investigation about the PV solar panel I-V characteristic to find a way to distinguish between normal cells and hot-spot cells depending on the changes of the panel output current. The current changes will help to design the real-time hot-spot detection system. In case if partial shadowing is applied to the PV panel, the system is equipped with a DSP to give an immediate judgment if hot-spot arises from one of the cells or not. From the experimental results, it is clarified that the hot-spot cells can be determined by calculating the current rate depending on the difference in the current divided by the short circuit current.