Experimental studies of fault location in PV module strings

Two methods for the fault location in PV module string were experimentally studied. One was the earth capacitance measurement (ECM) and the other was the time-domain reflectometry (TDR). By ECM, the disconnection position in the string was estimated by the earth capacitance value without the effects of the irradiance change, and the estimation error was small enough to determine the disconnection position in actual repair/maintenance operation. On the other hand, TDR could detect the degradation (series resistance increase) and the positions in the string by the change of response waveform.