Cloud Computing and Machine Learning-based Electrical Fault Detection in the PV System

ABSTRACT

A dependable and sustainable method of generating electricity is the use of photovoltaic systems. Each solar panel loses 0.5%–1% of its efficiency annually. Environmental issues and electrical problems cause solar panels to degrade. Electrical faults should be diagnosed promptly and correctly to minimize damage to the panel. Machine learning has shown remarkable achievements in a variety of areas recently. The focus of the current study is on developing applications for pre-trained machine learning models that have been properly tuned. For the accurate classification of electrical faults in a photovoltaic array, a suitable algorithm is chosen and will be installed on a web server after training the dataset for various electrical problems in a photovoltaic array. By simulating the PV system in the MATLAB/Simulink environment under various operating situations, the data necessary for creating the algorithm are obtained. The experimental setting validates the proposed model with 100% training accuracy and 97.399% testing accuracy for a set of randomly divided data.

KEYWORDS:

• Artificial intelligence
• Cloud computing
• Electrical faults
• Fault detection
• Machine learning
• Photovoltaic system
• Random forest algorithm
• Renewable energy sources

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

S. Ragul

S Ragul has been with the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Chettinad College of Engineering and Technology, Tamil Nadu, India, as assistant professor since 2020. He received a BE degree with first class in electrical and electronics engineering, and an ME degree with first class distinction in power electronics and drives from Chettinad College of Engineering and Technology and Nandha Engineering College, Erode, India, in 2013 and 2015, respectively. He is pursuing his PhD (part-time) at Anna University since 2021.

S. Tamilselvi

S Tamil Selvi has been with the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SSN College of Engineering, Tamil Nadu, India, as associate professor since 2016. She received a BE degree with first class in electrical and electronics engineering and an ME degree with first class distinction in power system engineering from Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, India, in 1999 and 2002, respectively. She successfully completed her PhD in distribution transformer design using evolutionary algorithms at Anna University in 2015. She has a GATE score of 85.53 percentile. She has over 17 years of work experience including 10 years of teaching experience, 2 years of industry experience and 4 years of full-time research experience. Email: [email protected]

S. Rengarajan

S Rengarajan is a passionate engineer with an unending quest to achieve excellence in his skills, academics and leadership qualities. Throughout his four years as in undergrad developed an interest in embedded microprocessors and controllers, control systems and power electronics. He gained a lot of hands-on experience in machine learning and tools such as MATLAB, ASPICE and MPLAB. He completed his bachelors (BE) in electrical and electronics engineering from SSN College of Engineering in 2022. He attained merit scholarship throughout the four years for academic excellence. Email: [email protected]

S. Guna Sundari

Gunasundari Selvaraj was born in India in 1979. She obtained her PhD (computer science and engineering) at Pondicherry University in 2017. She obtained her ME degree in computer science and engineering from the Faculty of Information and Communication Engineering, Anna University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India in 2005. She received her BE degree in computer science and engineering from Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India in 2001. She is having 17 years of teaching experience in various positions with enthusiastic involvement in the academic and administration of the institution. She served as junior research fellow in the research centre at Anna University. She is currently serving as associate professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Velammal Engineering College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Email: [email protected]