An Inclusive Investigation of Potential Faults in Solar Photovoltaic Array

India has been vigorously extending its solar power generation potential in the recent years. Due to the increasing penetration of photovoltaic technology in electricity sector, its performance efficiency and reliability has become an important concern. The PV arrays are inevitably subjected to fluctuating environmental factors and various electrical faults. Because of the non-linear characteristics and current-limiting behavior of the arrays, the faults in an array may not be identified. This paper presents all the potential faults that takes place in a PV array and a comprehensive analysis is performed on different faults namely string fault, inter-string fault, open-circuit (OC) fault, bypass diode short-circuit (SC) fault, degradation fault, ESD effect and faults due to partial shading using MATLAB software. A thorough investigation on the comparison of I-V and P-V characteristics of the healthy array and faulty array is performed. The impact of all these faults on photovoltaic array performance ratio (P.R) and on array parameters like $\mathrm{P}_{\mathrm{m}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{p}}, \mathrm{V}_{\mathrm{m}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{p}}$, and $\mathrm{I}_{\mathrm{m}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{p}}$ are analyzed through simulation studies.