Presentation: Photovoltaic System Monitoring and Analysis Using PI System

The outdoor PV module monitoring has been widely applied in today’s PV systems. As the monitoring resolution continues increasing, the amount of data collected also increases tremendously. A powerful storage and analysis tool is needed in order to deal with this huge data set. In this work, PI system is used to manage and analyze the outdoor PV monitoring system installed at the Florida Solar Energy Center. Real-time analysis is performed on data collected from the meteorologic station, the micro-inverters and the current-voltage (I-V) tracers. Through the various analysis tool provided by PI system, we are able to correct the raw I-V characteristics data of individual PV modules according to the ambient condition. Also, the loss mechanisms of individual PV module are analyzed. Notifications can be generated for the under-performed PV modules and the root causes are deduced. This automatic data analysis and processing effectively reduces operation and maintenance cost of PV system.