Failure Rate Determination and Failure Mode, Effect and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) Based on Historical Data for Photovoltaic Plants
Abstract
It is essential for photovoltaic plants investors, operators and equipment manufacturers to identify the failure modes and rates of the system in order to reduce investment risk, to focus their maintenance efforts on preventing those failures and to improve longevity and performance of the PV Plant. In this paper, it is assessed the importance of the Failure Modes within a real existing portfolio in Spain and Italy of continuous operation since 2008 and it is identified the module level failure modes, which are imperceptible in the standard monitoring systems, through the application of thermographic inspection. The experimental Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) and the failure rates are calculated and these ratios are used to define the ranking criterion to perform the Failure Mode, Effect and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) and to focus on the module level analysis. The conclusions highlight the most critical sub-system and failure modes within a photovoltaic PV plant.