Comparison of Fault-Detection Methods in Photovoltaic Modules

This Master's thesis is written to fulfil the graduation requirements of the Master's Programme in Renewable Energy Engineering during the spring of 2022, and is based on previous work at the University of Agder (UiA). The thesis compares the five different PV-module fault-detection techniques of UVF-, indoor/outdoor IRT-, EL-imaging, and IV-tracing, based on the current literature and the experiments performed on five select PV-modules. The faults of the five PV-modules are defined by visual inspection of the experiment results, and an order of when to use each of the five fault-detection techniques is presented. It was found that the faults-types detectable by these methods are cell-crack…