Recurrence Plots Based Method for Detecting Series Arc Faults in Photovoltaic Systems

Series arc faults (SAFs) are the most common faults in photovoltaic systems. If a SAF is not detected in time, it may lead to some catastrophic damages to the system. This article presents a new method for detecting SAFs in photovoltaic systems based on determinism in the voltage signal. The determinism of the signal is derived using the recurrence plots method. The recurrence plots provide a two-dimensional plot of the signal, from which the degree of determinism in the signal is derived as a criterion for detection of SAFs. The performance of the method is evaluated using plenty of experiments carried out in different SAF and normal conditions. The results confirm the high accuracy, high speed, and low computational burden of the proposed method.