Abstract
Solar energy has proven to be an undisputed frontrunner among renewable energy sources: it is clean, environmentally responsible, and cost-effective. Current methods for fault detection and localization in PV arrays, however, are largely inefficient and labor intensive. In this paper we have developed an efficient technique using IR Thermal Energy Analysis to detect and localize hot-spot faults. Infrared rays are used to produce sequential thermal images of the PV array. The proposed MATLAB algorithm then processes the images and localizes hot-spot faults by detecting changes between images, at the same time determining whether the hot-spot fault is permanent or transient. This proposed method will detect errors quickly and accurately, thereby raising the productivity of the system and increasing the life of solar cells.