Review of Guidelines for PV Systems Performance and Degradations Monitoring

Abstract

The recent growth in the PV system deployment and the higher scale of their production make it necessary to pay more attention towards the performance of those systems. System monitoring will provide the status of the systems showing possible degradations and any impending system failures. It also helps with maintaining system quality and ensuring the optimal performance of the system for its lifetime. COST Action PEARL PV aims to formulate such monitoring guidelines for the PV systems applicable for all types of PV technologies, depending upon the end use and duration of the monitoring need. The objective of the present paper is to quantify and provide a review of the guidelines and standards for monitoring of PV systems performance and degradation in practice, and also some results of preliminary work done regarding important information needed to be included in the monitoring guideline.