Detection of Parallel Arc Fault on Photovoltaic System Based on Fast Fourier Transform

Photovoltaic is one of the alternative electric producers that is widely used considering the availability of the main source of photovoltaic. The photovoltaic as an electrical energy source, it also to pay more attention to the risks that can cause the failure with the worst is an event of a fire. The fault causes the failure is parallel DC arc fault. However, Parallel DC Arc Fault cannot be detected by the conventional safety device such as Circuit Breaker. Therefore, the proposed algorithm fast Fourier transform is designed to detect and identify the event of the parallel arc fault. To identify the parallel arc fault and its characteristic, simulation using PSIM is used to get the current waveform of the parallel arc fault. To see the characteristic of the arc fault current, the initial current flow through the arc generator is needed. The order condition in the simulation is Short Circuit, Arc Fault, and then the Normal condition. The sum of the frequency spectrum is used as the method of comparing normal condition and fault condition with the result is the sum of the frequency spectrum during arc fault condition has a bigger value than normal condition. Moreover, the simulation result shows that the proposed algorithm has the accurate result for parallel arc fault detection.