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232 CHAPTER 7 Strategies for Fault Detection and Diagnosis

FIGURE 7.1
PV cost reduction in 2016.
have been achieved in 2016, as it can be seen in Fig. 7.1, where the prices correspond
to year 2016. As a result of the energy price evolution, most developed countries are
entering or in training to achieve the grid parity scenario, when the PV systems can
produce electricity at the same or lower price than the price of electricity generated
by conventional sources. However, still important efforts remain to be done in terms
of cost, performance, and reliability of PV systems, together with lowering the
perceived risk of owning and maintaining PV generation plants.
In this context, an important issue within the next few years will be the develop-
ment of automatic supervision strategies for PV systems that are already requested.
Control and supervision systems are always present in big PV plants because the
cost associated with the supervision system is not relevant in comparison with the total
cost of the PV plant. Normally, monitoring, control, and supervision plants are devel-
1
oped by using SCADA platforms. However, automatic supervision of PV systems
will be also incorporated in small- and medium-size PV systems in the near future.

2. PERFORMANCE PARAMETERS OF PHOTOVOLTAIC
SYSTEMS: YIELDS AND POWER LOSSES

The aim of any automatic supervision system of GCPVSs is to improve the PV sys-
tem performance and reliability by optimizing the output of the system to achieve
higher yields. Standard methods for performance analysis of GCPVSs take into ac-
count some normalized system yields and losses [2,3].

1
SCADA: Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition.