Experimental study of PV strings affected by cracks

Crack is one critical factor that degrades the performance of photovoltaic (PV) panels. To gain a better understanding of the impacts of cracks appeared on PVs and also to mitigate it, its failure mechanism, detrimental effects, criticality, and potential risks on independent PV panels are firstly reviewed in this study.

An experimental study which investigates the degree of series connected and parallel connected PV strings which are affected by cracked cells are presented. A comparison of impacts of the partially shaded PV panel string and cracked cells happened to the PV panel string is given to evaluate their criticality levels.

The experimental results show that the series connected PV panel string is strongly affected once the cell is seriously cracked, as the current generation capability is clamped. Partial shading, however, shows better performance. In addition, though the overall power the parallel connected PV string is reduced, it is less affected by the cracked cells compared to the series connected one.

Lastly, a bypass diode is added to a series connected PV panel string with cracked cells, and the experimental results show that it can be an effective way to minimise the negative impacts of cracks.