Aerial Infrared Thermography of a Utility-Scale PV Plant after a Meteorological Tsunami in Brazil

Aline Kirsten Vidal De Oliveira, Mohammadreza Aghaei, Uzoma Edward Madukanya, Lucas Nascimento, Ricardo Ruther

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

19 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Aerial Infrared Thermography (aIRT) is a nondestructive and cost-effective method for detecting faults in largescale PV plants. In this paper, a 1 MW multi-crystalline PV plantblock that was hit by a meteorological tsunami in Brazil in 2016, is inspected systematically using the aIRT method. The main objective was to validate this inspection technique for commercial application. Various failures like hotspots, bypassed substrings, short-circuited and disconnected PV strings were detected at the PV plant using aIRT inspection in less than one hour. The results have proven that this semi-autonomous method is very fast, reliable and effective for large scale PV plants.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2018 IEEE 7th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, WCPEC 2018 - A Joint Conference of 45th IEEE PVSC, 28th PVSEC and 34th EU PVSEC
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Pages684-689
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781538685297
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Nov 2018
Externally publishedYes
Event7th IEEE World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, WCPEC 2018 - Waikoloa Village, United States
Duration: 10 Jun 201815 Jun 2018

Conference

Conference7th IEEE World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, WCPEC 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityWaikoloa Village
Period10/06/1815/06/18

Funding

RR wishes to acknowledge with thanks the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for a Research Linkage project grant that allowed the acquisition of the IR camera used in this work.

Keywords

  • Aerial Infrared thermography (aIRT)
  • Fault Inspection.
  • Photovoltaic (PV) Plant
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

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