Photovoltaic DC arc fault detection method based on deep residual shrinkage network

Distributed photovoltaic systems have encountered unprecedented opportunities for development given their environmentally friendly nature and flexible power generation characteristics. However, numerous connecting lines and taps within the distributed photovoltaic system can be subject to insulation issues, which will consequently cause direct current (DC) arc faults and severe electrical fire hazards. Moreover, the power semiconductor devices in the photovoltaic inverter can introduce common-mode noises to the DC current, resulting in unwanted tripping of the DC arc fault detector. The study proposes an arc fault detection method utilizing a deep residual shrinkage network (DRSN) to address this issue, thereby precisely detecting DC arc faults. A test platform for series arc faults in photovoltaic systems is built. The arc current data are collected for characteristic analysis in time and frequency domains to determine which bandwidth is preferred for the algorithm. The model’s depth is increased by introducing residual connections, enhancing its feature extraction, and improving noise reduction capabilities. The residual shrinkage network has been enhanced to prevent a computation increase from increased network depth. Introducing a convolutional auto-encoder for data dimension reduction has decreased neural network parameters, thereby improving training speed. A prototype for detecting photovoltaic DC arc faults was constructed using Raspberry Pi 4B, validating the practical application value of the proposed method. Experimental results demonstrate that the prototype for detecting photovoltaic DC arc faults successfully fulfills the real-time detection standard of the conduction test.