A Review for Solar Panel Fire Accident Prevention in Large-Scale PV Applications

Due to the wide applications of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology, safe operation and maintenance of the installed solar panels become more critical as there are potential menaces such as hot spot effects and DC arcs, which may cause fire accidents to the solar panels. In order to minimize the risk...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE access 2020-01, Vol.8, p.1-1
Main Authors: Wu, Zuyu, Hu, Yihua, Wen, Jennifer, Zhou, Fubao, Ye, Xianming
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accident prevention
Accidents
Aging
Algorithms
Circuit faults
fire accident
Fires
Forensic engineering
hot-spot effect
Modules
Network analysis
Neural networks
Photovoltaic cells
Photovoltaics
Reconfiguration
Residential location
solar panel
Solar panels
Wavelet analysis
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Summary:Due to the wide applications of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology, safe operation and maintenance of the installed solar panels become more critical as there are potential menaces such as hot spot effects and DC arcs, which may cause fire accidents to the solar panels. In order to minimize the risks of fire accidents in large scale applications of solar panels, this review focuses on the latest techniques for reducing hot spot effects and DC arcs. The risk mitigation solutions mainly focus on two aspects: structure reconfiguration and faulty diagnosis algorithm. The first is to reduce the hot spot effect by adjusting the space between two PV modules in a PV array or relocate some PV modules. The second is to detect the DC arc fault before it causes fire. There are three types of arc detection techniques, including physical analysis, neural network analysis, and wavelet detection analysis. Through these detection methods, the faulty PV cells can be found in a timely manner thereby reducing the risk of PV fire. Based on the review, some precautions to prevent solar panel related fire accidents in large-scale solar PV plants that are located adjacent to residential and commercial areas.
ISSN:2169-3536
2169-3536
DOI:10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3010212