Prescriptive maintenance technique for photovoltaic systems

Abstract

In order to ensure the viability of Photovoltaic (PV) systems' installation, several Operation and Maintenance (O&M) strategies are followed, such as preventive, corrective and predictive maintenance. Even if these strategies can indirectly increase the profitability of PV systems, none of them deal with the actions that should be followed when multiple faults occur at one or more systems. As a result, the maintenance cost and the cost of the energy losses may increase, considering the prioritization schemes established by the O&M agencies. Based on this, at the present paper a prescriptive PV maintenance technique is proposed, from the perspective of O&M contractor, in order to provide the ability to the experts to schedule the maintenance activities, considering the maintenance cost, i.e., fuel cost and labor cost, and the cost of the energy losses. Considering the problems nature, i.e., decision-making, the proposed technique is based on Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), which is a Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) approach. The model's performance is compared to a base maintenance model in terms of the Net Present Value (NPR). The analysis highlights that the model's deployment can lead to a significant increment of NPV. © 2022 IEEE.