Reliability of photovoltaic solar systems through real O&M follow-up data

Abstract

This paper provides a detailed analysis of failures and incidents that occurred in 218 PV systems, in 24 PV plants and 17 PV parks, for 15 months of performance, located in Spain and Italy. The results show that the photovoltaic technology is the cause of the 20.3% of the incidents while the 44% of failures are caused due to external causes of the PV system installation. The 56.7% of the failures affected the energy production of the PV system. The major cause of failure is given by the monitoring systems, followed by low power inverters (between 5- 90 kW). Despite these failures, the efficiency of the facilities is high with a performance ratio between 69% and 83%.