Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks 23 (2020) 100389

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/segan

Investigation of diode dynamic effect on fault detection of photovoltaic

systems
∗
Ibrahim B.M. Taha a,b , , Nagy I. Elkalashy a,c , Mohammad Alsharef a , Nehmdoh A. Sabiha a,c ,
Mohamed K. Metwaly a,c , Ehab E. Elattar a,c
a
Electrical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Taif University, Taif, 21974, Saudi Arabia
b
Electrical Power and Machines Department, Faculty of Engineering, Tanta University, 31521, Tanta, Egypt
c
Electrical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Menoufia University, 32511 Shebin Elkom, Egypt

article info a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study proposes a new fault diagnosis algorithm for a photovoltaic (PV) solar system implemented
Received 19 June 2020 on the bases of diode distribution and two classifiers based on ensemble bagged trees and neural
Received in revised form 12 August 2020 pattern recognition techniques. The proposed approach is designed by adding two diodes connected
Accepted 7 September 2020
to the upper and lower terminals of each PV string. The two diodes are connected to prevent the
Available online 12 September 2020
reverse direction of faulted string currents, thereby preventing high injecting fault currents. Given
Keywords: that the string fault current is prevented owing to diode interaction, this dynamic interaction provides
PV solar system new states during the fault periods considered to detect string faults. Owing to the distributed diodes,
Ensemble bagged trees system voltage is not reduced during fault disturbances and voltage is not considered an input to
Neural pattern recognition the proposed detection techniques. Monitoring currents at the upper and lower ends of each string is
MATLAB/Simulink required as input for the proposed approaches to detect string fault types. The proposed approaches are
used to detect string fault types, such as cell-to-string negative terminal, cell-to-cell in the same string,
and string-to-string faults. The proposed model is applied for 400 kW, and the PV system consists of
4 arrays interconnected with 1200 V AC grid built-in MATLAB/Simulink. Experimental results validate
the newly suggested approaches.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction which continuously direct PV modules to face the sun at day-

Photovoltaic (PV) solar plants are considered a clean source of
energy because their operations do not produce any pollution [1].
Power generated by the PV solar power plants reached 300 GW
at the end of 2016, representing approximately 2% of power
generated around the world [2–4]. The immense advantages of a
PV solar system have led to its use to generate electrical power for
urban and suburban areas for the public, general public, and spe-
cial entities [5]. However, the initial manufacturing entailed high
cost, in which the global price of PV systems is 0.05 $/kWh [6].
Moreover, PV systems have low efficiency in generating electrical
power, although it was increased to 40% when connected to AC
systems [6].
Power inverters are required for grid-connected PV solar sys-
tems. PV solar system modules should be adaptively aligned to
the sun’s direction to attain maximum power using solar trackers,
∗ Corresponding author at: Electrical Engineering Department, College of
Engineering, Taif University, Taif, 21974, Saudi Arabia.
E-mail address: i.taha@tu.edu.sa (I.B.M. Taha).
time. Grid-connected PV systems and their local interconnection
decreased transmission and distribution losses.
The production capacity of electrical power based on PV sys-
tems was substantially increased for different applications and
purposes. Hence, PV systems should be continuously monitored
to detect faults that affect their performance and operation con-
ditions, particularly small systems operating without any mon-
itoring mechanisms [7]. Some studies have been conducted to
monitor the PV solar system operation and performance [5,8–25],
and focused on fault type detection.
In [8], a fault detection algorithm was introduced to evaluate
open and short circuits on PV string by monitoring the irradiance
level, string temperature, numbers of string modules, and output
power to diagnose the PV system fault type. In [9], a scenario
to diagnose the PV system was suggested based on a compari-
son between the simulated and measured in the entire system.
The diagnosed fault type was evaluated based on comparisons
between the deviation of errors of the DC current and voltage
with respect to errors calculated based on the fault-free system.
The results were validated based on experiments. In [11], a fault
detection was built based on the difference between the mea-
sured AC and DC powers. The model detected different types,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.segan.2020.100389
2352-4677/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
I.B.M. Taha, N.I. Elkalashy, M. Alsharef et al.
such as string faults, inverter faults, PV ageing, and maximum
power tracking errors (MPPT). In [12], a fault type detection was
diagnosed based on the analysis of array voltage and current.
The effects of partial shading on PV array voltage, current, and
PV system losses were also studied and discussed. In [15], the
grey wolf optimizer with genetic algorithm and Tabu search
algorithms were used to diagnose PV system fault types and their
locations. In [24], the random forest ensemble learning technique
was applied to detect the PV system fault location based on string
faults and currents. The model diagnosed different PV system
fault types, such as short and open circuit degradations partial
shading. However, they depended on monitoring the system volt-
ages and distributed currents to detect the fault types. In general,
the published fault detection techniques in the literature have
failed to contribute to prevent reversing current through faulted
strings during the fault periods.
This study presents a novel approach based on inserting two
diodes in each PV string, in which their aims prevent the high
string current during fault periods. Two artificial intelligence
(AI) approaches are used to detect string faults, and based on
the bagged ensemble trees and neural pattern recognition tech-
niques. The main contribution of the proposed approach is sug-
gested based on adding two diodes for each PV string; one diode
is connected to the upper terminal of the PV string, while the
other is connected to the lower end. The two diodes are con-
nected to prevent the reverse direction of string currents during
the fault intervals, and facilitate the fault detection based only
on the upper and lower currents of each string without ap-
plying string voltage to the proposed classifier approach. Given
the diode interaction with the faulted PV system, the proposed
approach is used to determine string faults, such as cell-to-string
negative terminal, cell-to-cell in the same string, and string-to-
string faults, based only on string current without requirements
of string voltage. The proposed model is applied for 400 kW, and a
PV system [26] consisting of four arrays is connected to a 120-kV
AC grid. The PV system and two suggested fault detection algo-
rithms are executed using MATLAB/Simulink. The experimental
results validate the proposed fault detection approaches using a
5-kW PV system.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2
illustrates the effects of utilizing two diodes in each PV string
at the upper and lower terminals. Section 3 introduces the two
proposed AI methods and discusses their performance. Section 4
presents the accuracy evaluation of the two proposed methods.
Section 5 provides the experimental verification. Lastly, Section 6
provides the conclusions.
2. System description
2.1. Simulated system
The complete PV solar system consists of 4 PV subsystems of
100 kW and 400 A ratings at irradiance of 1000 W/m2 (see Fig. 1).
As shown in Fig. 1, each PV subsystem is connected to a DC/DC
boost converter to attain maximum power point tracking. The
maximum power point tracking algorithm is implemented based
on the well-known perturb and observe technique, as reported
in [27]. The advantages of this method are its simplicity and
minimal measuring signals [28]. The control principles depend on
voltage perturbation to constantly keep the power towards in-
creasing each step with respect to the previous one. Accordingly,
the control provides operation oscillatory around the peak power
point.
In Fig. 1, each PV subsystem has 68 parallel strings, in which
each string contains 5 series SunPower SPR-315E modules. More-
over, Fig. 1 shows that two diodes are connected at the upper and
2
Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks 23 (2020) 100389
lower sides of each string to implement the proposed techniques.
The DC common busbar is used to collect power delivered to the
grid through the DC/AC three-phase inverter type of the voltage
source converter (VSC) operating at the unity power factor. The
inverter is connected to the grid using 400 kVA and 0.260/25
kV transformer. A line of 14 km and 25 kV is used to deliver
the power to the grid of 120 kV (source behind impedance rep-
resentation). These power elements are involved in the AC grid
system block shown in Fig. 1. Additional details of the PV farm,
converters, and grid representation are presented in [26] and
implemented using MATLAB/Simulink.
2.2. Data preparation
The system shown in Fig. 1 is subjected to different operation
cases, such as steady-state and electric faults concerning cell-to-
string negative terminal, cell-to-cell, and string-to-string faults,
as depicted in Fig. 2. The currents at the upper and lower ends of
each string are measured, and the total array current is recorded
at different fault cases. To generalize the proposed algorithm
concerning the PV strings shown in Fig. 2, string currents are
normalized as follows:
ia1 = Ia1 × N/It , (1)
ia2 = Ia2 × N/It , (2)
where ia1 and ia2 are the normalized currents of the upper and
lower end measured currents Ia1 and Ia2 , respectively, of string a;
It is the measured total array current; and N is the total string
number. For the system under study, N is 68 strings. In the pre-
ceding equations, factor N is utilized in the normalization because
it is the total number of strings. Accordingly, the normalized com-
puted current is close to one during the steady state. For training
purposes, the fault cases over the same string are collected for
distributed fault points through the string, in which these points
are selected and called cell 1, 2, 3, and 4 points. Thereafter, the
state of the cell-to-cell faults is represented as cell 1 to cell 2
faults, cell 1 to cell 3, cell 1 to cell 4, cell 1 to cell 5, cell 2 to cell
3, and cell 2 to cell 4, among others. All other fault options are
considered, and the measurements of all fault cases are collected,
normalized, and inserted into the classification model. A total
of 276 fault cases are measured and recorded. The measured
variables are the currents at the upper and lower ends of each
string and array line current, and are normalized using (1) and
(2). The string fault detector requires only the upper and lower
current normalized values of the different operation states and
corresponding fault states. The upper and lower fault currents of
strings a, b, c, and d are introduced in Fig. 2. The different three
detected fault types are shown in Fig. 2. The studied fault types
are as follows: (a) cell-to-cell fault (between cells 1 and 3), (b)
cell-to-string negative terminal fault type (cell 4 to ground), and
(c) string-to-string fault (between cell 2 of string c and cell 3 of
string d), as shown in Fig. 2.
The fault states are denoted as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 for steady-
state, high and low cell-to-negative terminal faults, high and low
cell-to-cell faults, and high and low string-to-string faults, re-
spectively, as indicated in Table 1. The term ‘‘high’’ is considered
for low fault resistances, while ‘‘low’’ is used for the high fault
resistances. For the distributed diodes considerations, the ‘‘high’’
and ‘‘low’’ faults are correspondingly associated with the diode
status during the fault period. For the high fault stress where the
fault resistance is low, the diode status is changed to the off-
state during the fault period, and vice versa. Accordingly, the fault
resistance limit for the ‘‘high’’ and ‘‘low’’ faults differ from fault
type to the other.
I.B.M. Taha, N.I. Elkalashy, M. Alsharef et al.
Fig. 1. Construction block diagram of the PV connected system using the MATLAB/Simulink toolbox.
Fig. 2. Fault types. (a) cell-to-cell fault, (b) cell-to-string negative terminal fault,
and (c) string-to-string fault.
Table 1
Fault case indicators.
States Descriptions
0 Fault-free system
1 High cell-to-string negative terminal fault
2 Low cell-to- string negative terminal fault
3 High cell-to-cell fault
4 Low cell-to-cell fault
5 High string-to-string fault
6 Low string-to-string fault
2.3. Diode effect on the data pattern
To build the database of fault cases related to the PV array,
the third array shown in Fig. 1 is implemented in a way to
perform the fault cases and correspondingly measure the string
currents used in the fault analyses. For example, the upper and
lower currents are measured for each string as inputs to the
protection system. Two configurations of the PV farm under study
are considered. The first configuration is free of diodes, while
the second one has two diodes inserted at the upper and lower
terminals of each string. One of the objectives of these diodes is
to limit the reverse currents in the string and avoid the corre-
sponding damages owing to reverse currents during fault events.
3
Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks 23 (2020) 100389
Unfortunately, this reverse current depends on the number of
parallel strings, in which the reverse fault current reaches N-1
times the single string current. Accordingly, the dynamic diode
in its reverse operation during faults prevents cell damages, and
is maximized to enhance fault detection. This approach can be
applied for any PV farm architecture under the condition that
each string contains the upper and lower diodes.
For the system under study depicted in Fig. 2 and the results
shown in Figs. 4 and 5, 1 and 2 refer to the upper and lower
end currents, respectively, of each string (e.g., strings a, b), while
D and W refer to diode consideration and without diodes, re-
spectively. In Figs. 4 and 5, the currents in the upper diagram
represent the upper currents of string a (ia1D , ia1W ) and string b
(ib1D , ib1W ) with and without diode considerations, respectively.
The lower diagram in the figure represents the lower currents of
string a (ia2D , ia2W ) and fault current (ifD , ifW ) with and without
diode considerations, respectively.
Fig. 3 shows the data patterns of utilizing (1) and (2) for
the two states of the system (i.e., free diode and diode-based
considerations). The comparison depicted in Fig. 3a shows that
the currents at the upper and lower ends of each string are
highly overlapped without diodes at both string ends compared
with that with distributed diode considerations. Therefore, fault
type detection with different classification techniques would be
enhanced with diode implementations, as shown in the patterns
in Fig. 3b. The results in Fig. 3 show that the upper and lower
currents can reverse their direction with extremely high values
during the fault periods without utilizing diodes. However this
reverse current does not exist when utilizing distributed diodes.
The presentation shown in Fig. 3, including the output fault class,
accurately ensures fault detection possibility using distributed
current measurements and distributed diode consideration.
The results in Fig. 4 are for the fault case in the string a cell-
to negative terminal string and fault resistance 3  during the
fault period from 0.2 to 0.3 s. The results in this figure show
that the fault current with utilizing diodes does not increased to
high values (0.23 p.u.), whereas the fault current without utilizing
diodes is increased to approximately 6.5 their value during steady
state operations. This result illustrates the importance of utilizing
the two diodes with each string.
Fig. 5 illustrates the performance of another fault case that is
string-to-string fault type (from the first cell of the second string
I.B.M. Taha, N.I. Elkalashy, M. Alsharef et al.
Fig. 3. Comparison of data. (a) Diode-free, (b) Diode consideration.
Fig. 4. Faults with 3  between cell 2 of the first string and negative string
terminal with and without utilizing diodes.
to the third cell of the third string) through fault resistance 3
 during the fault period from 0.2 s to 0.3 s. The figure shows
the comparison between the currents of string and fault with
and without utilizing diodes for the considered string-to-string
fault, where ib1D , ic1D , ib1W , and ic1W are the upper currents of
strings b and c with and without diodes, respectively; ic2D and
ic2W are lower currents of the string c with and without diodes,
respectively, and ifD and ifW are the fault current with and
without diode, respectively. During the fault period, the upper
current of string c is reversed and increased to approximately
twice its value without utilizing diodes. Moreover, it showed
that the fault current with utilizing diodes does not increase to
high values, whereas that without utilizing diodes is increased to
approximately thrice its values during the fault period. Moreover,
4
Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks 23 (2020) 100389
Fig. 5. Faults with 3  between the first cell of the second string and the third
cell of the third string with and without utilizing diodes.
the current of the third string is reversed and reached approxi-
mately twice its value during the fault period. The results confirm
that the applying diodes at the two terminals of each string have
a good effect to protect the strings against reverse high currents
during the string-to-string fault periods.
3. Fault detection methods concerning diodes interactions
This study utilizes two intelligence techniques to detect and
classify the fault in the PV farm by considering the diode interac-
tion at the string terminals. One of the fault detection techniques
is selected from the MATLAB/Classification Learner (MCL) appli-
cation, while the second one is the neural pattern recognition
method. These techniques are discussed as follows.
3.1. Using one of MCL
This research evaluates MCL for the application of classify-
ing the PV fault types. MCL has five main classification tech-
niques: decision trees, discriminant analysis, support vector ma-
chines (SVM), nearest neighbours (KNN), and ensemble classi-
fication techniques. Each of these five techniques has several
sub-classification algorithms. For example, the ensemble clas-
sification technique is categorized into bagged trees, boosted
trees, subspace discriminant, subspace KNN, and RUSBoost trees.
Classification learner is generally used to determine the best sub-
classification algorithm after evaluating all the sub techniques
using the training data.
The ensemble bagged trees method is a binary system, which
starts at the root node towards the leaf node (identified deci-
sion node). At the root node, a condition of the certain variable
(observer) is evaluated (either satisfied or not) to estimate the
decision flow direction (either right or left side). The process is
repeated until reaching the leaf node that represents the decided
classifications of the system status. The decision tree model is
built using the training data set and is used thereafter to predict
a new data set [29].
The training procedure is as follows. First, the string currents
(upper and lower sides) and total array current are measured
during the steady-state and different fault cases (as presented in
Fig. 3, particularly Fig. 3b). Thereafter, all features of the classifi-
cation learner are selected to identify the best suitable one to be
used to classify the system states. The cross/fold approach with
I.B.M. Taha, N.I. Elkalashy, M. Alsharef et al. Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks 23 (2020) 100389

Table 2
Bagged tree controlling parameters.
Controlling parameters Description
Results Accuracy: 96.38%
Training time: 2.8768 s
Predicted speed: 1400 obs/s
Model type Preset: Bag trees
Ensemble method: Bag
Learner type: Decision tree
Maximum number of splits: 275
Number of learners: 30

Table 3
Sample fault cases for bagged trees check.

Fig. 6. Bagged ensemble trees method of the training data with 96.38% accuracy
to fault classification.

five folds is selected to validate the system model. From training Table 4
the measured steady-state and fault cases, the performance eval- Confusion matrix of the bagged trees model.
uation indicated that the ensemble bagged trees method had the Predicted class Accuracy
best performance. State 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
The training results illustrated that the ensemble bagged trees 0 11 0 0 0 0 0 0 100%
method had good training accuracy compared with that of the 1 0 26 0 0 0 1 0 96.3%
other methods introduced in the classification learner MATLAB 2 0 0 15 0 0 0 3 83.3%
True class 3 0 0 0 66 1 0 0 98.5%
toolbox [30]. These techniques are described, and their imple-
4 0 0 0 2 42 0 0 95.5%
mentation process is defined in the MATLAB classification learner 5 0 0 0 0 0 55 0 100%
toolbox [30]. 6 0 0 2 0 1 0 51 94.4%
The data sets are divided into 5 folds using the cross/fold Overall accuracy 96.38%
validation approach. The maximum number of splits is 275, while
the number of learners is 30 for the proposed bagged trees model.
Table 2 shows that the bagged tree has the controlling parame- Table 4 illustrates the confusion matrix of the bagged en-
ters. The overall performance accuracy of the bagged ensemble semble trees method with the 276 case studies, in which the
trees method is 96.38%. Table 1 shows that this performance is confusion matrix describes the relationship between the true and
for the fault classification. predicted classes detected by the classifier method. The 276 test
The tree plot of the bagged trees method is shown in Fig. 6, case studies include 11, 27, 18, 67, 44, 55, and 54 for fault states
which confirms the online implementation applicability of the and 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, respectively. Its diagonal elements
detection method. The bagged tree shown in Fig. 6 has the ad- represent the numbers of predicted samples corresponding to
vantage of simplicity, which is due to the proposed approach of each class, while the off-diagonal elements represent the number
adding diodes at the upper and lower ends of each string, as of false detecting samples against each class. From the confusion
depicted in the system under study in Fig. 2. This figure also matrix, the proposed model succeeds in detecting all steady-state
illustrates the sequence from the root node to the final leaf node cases (11 cases), while it fails only in detecting 4 cases from 45
corresponding to each operation state. For example, the operating cases of cell-to-negative terminal faults. It succeeds in 108 case
state 3 can be obtained as follows: ia2 should be under 0.19085 studies (i.e., 66/67 high cell-to-cell fault + 42/44 low cell-to-cell
p.u. and ia1 is below 0.5533, while the operating state 1 can be fault) from the 111 cell-to-cell fault cases. Moreover, it succeeds
obtained when ia2 is above or equal to 1.0522 p.u., as shown in to detect 106 (55/55 high cell-to-cell fault + 51/54 low cell-to-
Fig. 6. The classifier representation depicted in Fig. 6 confirms cell fault) cases from 109 string-to-string fault cases. The overall
the simplicity of the classifier implementation either by using performance accuracy of the ensemble bagged trees model to
Simulink or a digital signal processing board with the expectedly detect the different fault cases is 96.38%, which is attained by
low execution time of the classification algorithm. considering the diode interaction. However, the accuracy is 100%
Table 3 presents seven fault state test cases to check the when the decision is only for fault detection and not for fault
bagged trees presented in Fig. 6. The seven test cases consist of classification. In addition, the algorithm accuracy is extremely
one case study for each 7 fault states (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6). reduced to 71% using the training data of the system without
The highlighted cases represented three cases to illustrate how diode implementation.
the tree predicts the fault state. The first highlighted case has
fault state of 2 and the tree takes the path ‘‘ABCEFHJ2’’ which 3.2. Using neural pattern recognition method
means that the tree correctly predicts the fault state. The second
highlighted case has fault state 4 and the tree takes the path The neural pattern recognition approach is also used to de-
‘‘ABCEG4’’ to reach the fault state 4 with correctly detecting the tect the PV system operating state. The 276 training data sets
fault state. The third highlighted sample with fault state 6 will be are used to build the neural pattern recognition-MATLAB model.
detected by the tree flow path ‘‘ABC6’’ through the tree. The neural pattern recognition model was designed to include
5
I.B.M. Taha, N.I. Elkalashy, M. Alsharef et al. Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks 23 (2020) 100389

Table 5
Confusion matrix of using the neural pattern recognition model.
Predicted class Accuracy
States 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
0 11 0 0 0 0 0 0 100%
1 0 27 0 0 0 0 0 100%
2 0 0 16 0 0 0 2 88.9%
True class 3 0 0 0 66 1 0 0 98.5%
4 0 0 0 0 44 0 0 100%
5 0 0 0 0 0 55 0 100%
6 0 0 2 0 0 0 52 96.3%
Overall accuracy 98.20%

Fig. 8. Cross-entropy performance of the training, validation, and testing data

sets.

Fig. 7. ROC plotting of the training, validation, testing, and overall data sets.

1 output, 2 input, and 25 hidden layers. The neural pattern
recognition approach is a binary output system, thereby enabling
the operating states to be converted to binary codes as follows.
The codes [1 0 0 0 0 0 0], [0 1 0 0 0 0 0], [0 0 1 0 0 0 0], [0
0 0 1 0 0 0], [0 0 0 0 1 0 0], [0 0 0 0 0 1 0], and [0 0 0 0 0
0 1] are for 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 condition states, respectively.
The training data sets are divided into 70%, 15%, and 15% for the
training, validation, and testing stages, respectively. The built-in
neural pattern recognition-MATLAB toolbox is used to generate
the proposed neural pattern recognition model. As summarized
in Table 5 illustrating the confusion matrix, the performance
accuracies of the designed neural pattern recognition model are
97.9%, 100%, 97.6%, and 98.2% for the training, validation, testing,
and overall data sets, respectively.
Fig. 7 shows the receiver operating characteristic (ROC), which
is a metric used to check the quality of classifiers for the training,
validation, testing, and overall data sets. The results ensure that
the ROC plot of the training data set is extremely close to 1, vali-
dation data set is equal to 1, and testing data set is near 1. Lastly,
the overall data set is extremely close to 1, which means high-
quality classification process. Fig. 8 presents the cross-entropy
performance of the training, validation, and testing data sets. The
best performance of the validation data set is obtained after 38
epochs with a value of 0.000899.
From the evaluation of the results presented in this section,
the distributed diode effect on the fault current distributions aims
to detect the faults in the PV solar system. The diode performance
is either on or off-state, which simplifies the fault detection
issue. The training accuracy of the bagged ensemble trees with
the 276 cases obtained from the classification learner is 96.38%,
while the neural pattern recognition approach presents a training
accuracy of 98.2%. Therefore, the prediction of the neural pattern
6
Fig. 9. Predicting performance of the two proposed models with 106 testing
cases.
recognition model is better than that of bagged tree, thereby
providing good detection for the majority of the new cases but
continue to be less than the neural pattern recognition model.
4. Performance evaluation
4.1. Detection accuracy
The proposed two prediction models are tested with the other
106 test cases. The test cases consist of 3, 11, 10, 20, 20, 21, and 21
for fault state indicators 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, respectively. Fig. 9
presents the detection results of the bagged trees (see Fig. 9a)
and neural pattern recognition (see Fig. 9b) models compared
with the actual fault states. The results show that the bagged
trees method has 100% accuracy for all fault states, except state
2 (‘‘low’’ cell-to-negative terminal fault), in which the accuracy
is reduced to 40%. The fault detecting of state 2 is detected as
state 1, which is a similar fault category (‘‘high’’ cell-to-negative
terminal fault). The overall accuracy of the bagged trees model
with 106 testing cases is 94.34%. For the neural pattern recogni-
tion model, the detecting accuracy with the 106 test cases is 100%
for all fault states. Thus, it is used for predicting the fault states
in the next section.
From the performance evaluation in this subsection, the rea-
sons for detecting string faults based only on string currents
are due to utilizing two diodes with each string, in which the
distributed diodes prevent the reversing current through strings
during fault periods. Accordingly, the system voltage is unaffected
by the fault disturbance and excluded within the fault detection
I.B.M. Taha, N.I. Elkalashy, M. Alsharef et al. Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks 23 (2020) 100389

Fig. 10. Comparisons between bagged ensemble trees and neural pattern
recognition methods with three fault cases.
Fig. 11. Class detection neural pattern recognition model, cell-to-cell fault of
the third string between cells 1 and 3 through 60  fault resistance.

algorithm. However, the diode dynamic interactions during the

fault disturbance is maximized and the results attain a high
prediction accuracy with the two proposed models (i.e., 98.2%
with neural pattern recognition and 96.38% with bagged trees
methods, as summarized in Tables 3 and 4) for the training fault
cases. The two models are built based on the upper and lower
string currents without using string voltage with high accuracy.
Moreover, the proposed models have 94.34% and 100% with test-
ing fault cases for the bagged trees and neural pattern recognition
model, respectively (see Fig. 9).

4.2. Case studies

The proposed detection models are implemented in the MAT-

LAB/Simulink PV system model to detect the system operating
state based on the fault states in Table 1. Different operation
case studies are conducted and implemented to detect the per-
formance accuracy of the two suggested fault detection models.
Fig. 10 presents comparisons between the two suggested meth-
ods (bagged trees and neural pattern recognition methods) for the
Fig. 12. Class detection of neural pattern recognition for the fault case of cell 4
fault detection of the PV system and corresponding upper and to the negative terminal of string 1 through 3  resistance.
lower string currents of the faulted string. A cell-to-cell solidly
fault is between cells 1 and 3 of the faulted string from 0.05 s to
0.15 s, in which it is perfectly detected by the two classification
returned to 0 thereafter. The proposed neural pattern recognition
methods with class 3. A cell-to-negative terminal solidly fault is
model successfully detects the fault state with extremely high
between cell 2 of the faulted string and the negative terminal
performance.
from 0.2 s to 0.3 s. This fault is ideally detected by the two classifi-
Fig. 12 presents the fault indication state using the neural
cation methods as the correct fault indicator state 1. Furthermore,
pattern recognition with the fault connection from cell 4 to the
a string-to-string fault is between cell 4 of string a and cell 2
of string b from 0.35 to 0.45 s, in which it is correctly detected negative terminal of the system, where the faulted string through
by the two methods as the fault indicator state 5. Note that the 3  resistance during the fault period from 0.2 s to 0.3 s. Note that
two methods detect the faults with high detection performance the upper current of the neighbour sting is unaffected during the
accuracy. fault period, while that of the faulted string is increased and the
Fig. 11 illustrates the class detection of the neural pattern lower current is decreased to zero during the fault period. The
recognition with the cell-to-cell fault on the third string between neural pattern recognition detection model correctly detects the
cells 1 and 3, 60  fault resistance, and fault period from 0.2 s fault type as a fault indicator state 1 during the fault period.
to 0.3 s. The results illustrate the time-domain performance of Fig. 13 illustrates the class detection of the neural pattern
the upper current of the first string and the third one and the recognition with the fault between cell 1 of the second string
corresponding detecting fault indicator state for the two strings. and cell 3 of the third string, 15  fault resistance, during the
The fault indicator state of the first string (indicated by S1FC fault period from 0.2 s to 0.3 s, and their corresponding upper
(string 1 fault class) in Fig. 11) is not changed during the fault, in strings current. The fault is correctly detected by the neural
which its state is 0, thereby indicating a steady-state operation. pattern recognition model of the third-string (indicated by S3FC
The fault indicator state of the third string (indicated by S3FC in Fig. 10) as fault indicator state 5, while the neural pattern
in Fig. 8) is changed from 0 to 4 during a fault period and recognition model of the second string (indicated by S2FC in
7
I.B.M. Taha, N.I. Elkalashy, M. Alsharef et al.
Fig. 13. Fault between cell 1 of string 2 and cell 3 of string 3 with 15  fault
resistances.
Fig. 14. Irradiance in cells 1 and 2 of string 1 from 0.1 s to 0.3 s.
Fig. 10) detects the fault as a fault indicator state 1. Fig. 13
illustrates the fault current (ifbc ) between strings b and c, which
is increased to an extremely low value (close to zero) during the
fault period and returned to 0 p.u. after fault removal. Users will
easily observe the fault type in the second and third strings.
Fig. 14 presents the performance owing to irradiance reduc-
tion in cells 1 and 2 of string 1 during from 0.1 s to 0.3 s. The
upper current of the neighbour string is unaffected during the
irradiance period, while the upper current of the irradiance string
is decreased during the irradiance period. The neural pattern
recognition detection model correctly detects the fault type as a
fault indicator state 4 during the fault period.
Fig. 15 illustrates the performance during the cell-to-cell fault
between cells 2 and 4 with 3  fault resistances of string 2 from
0.2 s to 0.3 s, irradiance reduction of cells 1 and 2 on string 1
by 20% from 0.1 s 0.3 s, and their corresponding upper string
currents. The fault is correctly detected by the neural pattern
recognition model of the second string (S2FC) as the fault indi-
cator state 3, while the neural pattern recognition model of the
third string (S3FC) detects the fault as a fault indicator state 0. The
effect of shadow (irradiance reduction by 20% from 1000 W/m2 to
800 W/m2 ) is applied to string 1 from 0.1 s to 0.3 s. This effect is
detected by the neural pattern recognition model and indicated
8
Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks 23 (2020) 100389
Fig. 15. Fault between cells 2 and 4 with 15  fault resistances of string 2 f
(rom 0.2 s to 0.3 s) and irradiance reduction of cell one by 20% (from 0.1 s to
0.3 s).
Table 6
PV panel data.
Performance at standard test conditions
Maximum power (PMPP ) 280 W
Short Circuit Current (ISC ) 9.41 A
Open circuit voltage 38.97 V
Current at maximum power 8.84 A
Voltage at maximum power 31.67 V
by SF1C with indicator state 4. Although the shadow faults are
not considered in the training process, the model detects it as a
cell-to-cell fault.
5. Experimental validation
This section experimentally evaluates the dynamic interac-
tion of the diode using 5 kW, 3 strings, and PV system. The
PV system is installed at one of the building rooftops of the
Electrical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Taif
University (see Fig. 16). Each string consists of six panels, in
which the data of each panel are summarized in Table 6. The
inverter is a three-phase, 60 Hz, on-grid, and has two maximum
power point tracking managers. The first manager controls the
maximum power point tracking mechanism of two PV strings,
while the second manager separately controls the third PV string.
Additional details of the inverter and operation are provided
in [31]. The diodes are inserted at the terminals of each string.
The faults are intentionally made to maximize the connections
between the PV panels.
Table 7 shows the measurements and classifier performance.
The measurements are for the two strings connected to the
same maximum power point tracking manager. The first test
case is an instantaneous measurement of the fault-free case,
in which the currents are near one another. The fault cases of
module-to-module (cell-to-cell in the same string) are produced
by maximizing the interconnection cables between the module of
each string. Given that there are six modules for each string, there
are five interconnection points in the string, and accordingly,
there are four-fault cases for the same string. Moreover, there
are four-fault cases for string-to-string fault type. These eight
measured fault cases are listed in Table 6. Unfortunately, the
string-to-ground faults are not measured because the terminals
I.B.M. Taha, N.I. Elkalashy, M. Alsharef et al. Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks 23 (2020) 100389

Table 7
Experimental measurements and classifier performance.
Fault conditions String 1 String 2 Suggested classifier outputs
ia1 (A) ia2 (A) ib1 (A) ib2 (A) Bagged tree Neural Net.
S1FC S2FC S1FC S2FC
Fault-free 7.29 7.42 7.49 7.48 0 0 0 0
Case 1 0 0 7.22 7.26 3 0 3 0
Cell-to-cell Case 2 0 0 7.4 7.4 3 0 3 0
Case 3 0 0 7.2 7.3 3 0 3 0
Case 4 0 0 7.15 7.16 3 0 3 0
Case 1 0 6.67 7 0.42 4 5 5 5
String-to-string Case 2 0 6.68 7.12 0.52 4 5 5 5
Case 3 0 7.17 7.07 0 5 5 5 5
Case 4 0 7.07 6.96 0 5 5 5 5

the decision goes to the right side at the root node. At the second
node, the current ib2 is below 1.05 p.u. Hence, the decision goes
to the left side. At the third node, the decision goes to the left
side to reach the fourth node (current is below 1.0035). At the
fourth node, the decision goes to the right side (current is above
0.9438). At the fifth node, the decision goes to the right side
(current is above 0.07718) and the decision at the sixth node (leaf
node) goes to the right side to detect the fault type as 0, which
means steady-state operation. From this performance, the bagged
tree method successfully discriminates the fault. The performance
of the neural pattern recognition shown in Table 6 indicates
the fault using the experimental measurements. In general, the
designed bagged tree and neural pattern recognition methods
using the simulation fault data accurately detects the fault made
using the laboratory measurements. This result confirms the uni-
versality of the proposed technique based on normalized string
currents in (1) and (2).

6. Conclusions

A new proposed approach has been suggested based on adding

Fig. 16. Experimental system. (a) PV strings, (b) grid-connected inverter.
of the two strings are connected internally in the inverter for
processing the maximum power point tracking. The experimen-
tal measurements are collected and processed offline thereafter
within the MATLAB/Simulink for the proposed two fault detection
algorithms. The zero current values in Table 6 ensures the diode
turning off states owing to the fault occurrences and expected
successful fault detection. However, the designed fault detec-
tors are based on a simulation fault data set, thereby ensuring
the universality of the proposed algorithm. By processing the
measurements on the Bagged ensemble trees method imple-
mented (see Fig. 3), this classifier successfully indicates a fault
case as in the last column in Table 6. This experimental evaluation
ascertains the successful operation of the proposed approaches.
Table 7 shows that cases 1, 2, 3, and 4 represents a cell-to-cell
fault in string 1 with ia1 = ia2 = 0 p.u. Considering fault case 2 as
an example and from the bagged tree represented in Fig. 3, the
current at the root node is below 0.19085 p.u. Thus, the detection
is moved to the left to the final leaf node, thereby indicating
that the current ia2 is below 0.5533 p.u. That is, the detection
decision is 3 (high cell-to-cell fault in string 1). Although the
second string (the healthy string) has currents of 7.4 A for the
upper and lower ends (i.e., 0.988 p.u., which is above 0.19085),
9
two diodes at the terminals of each PV string. The two diodes
interaction prevented the reverse direction of the string currents
during fault intervals, thereby facilitating the service continuity
from the other healthy strings. The fault detection algorithm had
been proposed using two classifier techniques, namely, ensemble
bagged trees method and neural pattern recognition technique.
String currents were measured and used as inputs for training the
two suggested approaches. The proposed model had been used to
detect the string fault types, such as cell-to-string negative termi-
nal, cell-to-cell, and string-to-string faults. The proposed model is
applied for a simulated 400 kW, PV system consisting of 4 arrays
connected 1200 V AC grid built in the MATLAB/Simulink. The
results obtained from the experimental tests satisfied those ob-
tained from the simulated system. As the designed fault detector
using simulation results correctly detected the experimental fault
cases, universality is achieved owing to the normalized string
currents. Lastly, the effect of irradiance reduction is considered
and implemented. The proposed detecting models successfully
detect faults even during irradiance differences for the PV strings.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
This study was funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research,
Taif University (Saudi Arabia), KSA [Research Project Number
6147-440-1].
I.B.M. Taha, N.I. Elkalashy, M. Alsharef et al.
References
[1] L. Piano, S. Mayumi, Kozo, Toward an integrated assessment of the per-
formance of photovoltaic systems for electricity generation, Appl. Energy
186 (2017) 167–174.
[2] International Energy Agency, Report, 2017.
[3] T. Hunt, The Solar Singularity is Nigh, Greentech Media, 2015.
[4] Snapshot of global PV 1992–201, in: Photovoltaic Power Systems Program,
International Energy Agency, 2015.
[5] R. Madeti, S. Singh, Monitoring system for photovoltaic plants: a revie,
Renew. Sustain. Energy 67 (2017) 1180–1207.
[6] H. Nancy, Terawatt-scale photovoltaics: Trajectories and challenges,
Science 356 (2017) 141–143.
[7] M. Davarifar, A. Rabhi, A. El-Hajjaji, ‘Comprehensive modulation and
classification of faults and analysis their effect in DC side of photovoltaic
system, Energy Power Eng. 5 (04) (2013).
[8] N. Gokmen, E. Karatepe, B. Celik, ‘Simple diagnostic approach for deter-
mining of faulted PV modules in string-based PV array, Sol. Energy 86
(2012) 3364–3377.
[9] S. Silvestre, A. Chouder, E. Karatepe, Automatic fault detection in grid
connected PV systems, Sol. Energy 94 (2013) 119–127.
[10] S. Silvestre, M. da Silva, A. Chouder, New procedure for fault detection in
grid connected PV systems based on the evaluation of current and voltage
indicators, Energy Convers. Manage. 86 (2014) 241–249.
[11] W. Chine, A. Mellit, A. Massi, Fault detection method for grid-connected
photovoltaic plants, Renew. Energy 66 (2014) 99–110.
[12] S. Silvestre, S. Kichou, A. Chouder, Analysis of current and voltage indi-
cators in grid connected PV (photovoltaic) systems working in faulty and
partial shading conditions, Energy 86 (2015) 42–50.
[13] M. Dhimish, V. Holmes, B. Mehrdadi, Photovoltaic fault detection algorithm
based on theoretical curves modelling and fuzzy classification system,
Energy 140 (2017) 276–290.
[14] S. Madeti, S. Singh, A comprehensive study on different types of faults and
detection techniques for solar photovoltaic system, Sol. Energy 158 (2017)
161–185.
[15] A. Hazra, S. Das, M. Basu, An efficient fault diagnosis method for PV
systems following string current, J. Cleaner Prod. 154 (2017) 220–232.
[16] S. Madeti, S. Singh, Online fault detection and the economic analysis of
grid-connected photovoltaic systems, Energy 134 (2017) 121–135.
10
Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks 23 (2020) 100389
[17] M. Dhimish, V. Holmes, B. Mehrdadi, Comparing mamdani sugeno fuzzy
logic and RBF ann network for PV fault detection, Renew. Energy 117
(2018) 257–274.
[18] F. Harrou, Y. Sun, B. Taghezouit, Reliable fault detection and diagnosis of
photovoltaic systems based on statistical monitoring approaches, Renew.
Energy 116 (2018) 22–37.
[19] A. Triki-Lahiani, A. Abdelghani, I. Slama-Belkhodja, Fault detection and
monitoring systems for photovoltaic installations: A review, Renew.
Sustain. Energy Rev. 82 (2018) 2680–2692.
[20] O. Hachanaa, G. Tinab, K. Hemsas, PV array fault diagnostic technique for
BIPV systems, Energy Build. 126 (2018) 263–274.
[21] Z. Chen, F. Han, L. Wu, Random forest based intelligent fault diagnosis for
PV arrays using array voltage and string currents, Energy Convers. Manage.
178 (2018) 250–264.
[22] G. Chen, P. Lin, S. Cheng, Location for fault string of photovoltaic array
based on current time series change detection, Energy Procedia 145 (2018)
406–412.
[23] A. Khoshnami, I. Sadeghkhani, Two-stage power–based fault detection
scheme for photovoltaic systems, Sol. Energy 176 (2018) 10–21.
[24] S. Dhanup, N. Pillai, A comprehensive review on protection challenges and
fault diagnosis in PV systems, Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. (2018) 18–40.
[25] M. Ahmadipour, H. Hizam, M. Othman, A fast fault identification in a grid-
connected photovoltaic system using wavelet multi-resolution singular
spectrum entropy and support vector machine, Energies 12 (2019) 2–18.
[26] https://ch.mathworks.com/help/physmod/sps/examples/400-kw-grid-
connected-pv-farm-average-model.html.
[27] A. Atallah, A. Abdelaziz, R. Jumaah, Implementation of perturb and observe
MPPT of PV system with direct control method using buck and buckboost
converters, Emerg. Trends Electr. Electron. Instrum. Eng.: Int. J. (EEIEJ)
(2014).
[28] D. Hohm, M. Ropp, Comparative study of maximum power point tracking
algorithms using an experimental, programmable, maximum power point
tracking test bed, in: IEEE Proc. of Photovoltaic Specialists Conference,
2000, pp. 1699–1702.
[29] K. Mishra, A. Yadav, M. Pazoki, A novel fault classification scheme for series
capacitor compensated transmission line based on bagged tree ensemble
classifier, IEEE Access 6 (2018) 27373–27382.
[30] https://ch.mathworks.com/help/stats/classificationlearner-ahtml.
[31] Fronius symo 5.0 − 3 − M inverter, 2020, https://www.froniuscom/en/
photovoltaics/products/all-products/inverters/fronius-symo/fronius-symo-
5-0-3-m (accessed on 01.01.2020).